By Kat Liendgens — Feb 27, 2024 11:00 AM
The 17th annual Cascade User Conference is in the books and broke the attendance record from 2023.
Close to 400 attendees participated in the event.
Attendees enjoyed a wide variety of presentations relevant to web administrators, developers, marketers, and end-users of Cascade CMS, including technical efficiency and content strategy.
The conference offered strategic and technical tracks to cater to different facets of the Cascade CMS community - and it delivered high-quality presentations and thought-provoking discussions.
The technical track showcased tips, tricks, and best practices on how to get the most out of Cascade CMS to optimize your websites.
Vince Ruppert from Washington University in St. Louis - Engineering wowed the audience with his session on controlling WYSIWYG content - a topic near and dear to the hearts of developers and marketers alike.
"This was an amazing presentation! So many things I want to implement right away," wrote one attendee.
Using Cascade’s APIs was another popular topic. Kevin Glidden from the University of Houston, for instance, demonstrated how he used the Query API to improve the performance of the University’s newsroom.
University of North Carolina Wilmington’s web team, including Philip Kukla, Danielle Ferrell, and Zachery Morgan, revealed the incredible power of the REST API. They built several impressive power apps to boost productivity, work more efficiently, and integrate different tools, such as Photoshelter.
Hannon Hill’s Charlie Holder and Sam Skinner shared best practices for Cascade CMS with regard to user management, site organization, workflow efficiency, and web governance, while Graham Lewis provided an overview of Clive, our web personalization tool.
Jill Whitaker and Mark Whittaker from Southern Utah University walked us through the planning and implementation of their award-winning program finder.
"Thanks the detailed approach. Also, thanks for keeping it real," read one session review.
Long-time Cascade user Andrew Bausermann of William & Mary hosted perhaps the most technical session of the conference, in which he showed many examples of how to create “magic” for website visitors and Cascade editors through his web stack.
Sandra Fancher of Hannon Hill partner Stamats and Doreen Fagerheim of Belhaven University highlighted how content bricks can be used to centrally manage content snippets to be used across multiple pages - a massive time saver.
Dr. Jason Beers of Cal Poly Pomona explained how to use JavaScript to check for and fix accessibility issues before publishing.
The technical track was an impressive reflection of the flexibility of Cascade that developers appreciate and embrace.
Even though the strategic track was primarily geared toward marketing professionals, many technical attendees joined the sessions, which shows that everyone is invested in making websites more usable, findable, personalized, and inclusive.
Morehead State University’s dynamic sisters Toni Hobbs and April Hobbs Nutter told their story of accomplishing what seemed like an impossible task:
Redesigning and optimizing the university’s website for users and search engines, choosing and implementing a new CMS, and auditing and migrating content in only one year.
Elisa Choy and Michaela Morrison of Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) shared their success in breaking from an org-chart-driven website to a student-first approach.
Focusing on your audience and your user experience was one of the major themes during the conference, as echoed by Brian Piper of the University of Rochester.
He emphasized that your website visitors care about how you can help them, not how wonderful or accomplished you are.
Knowing your audience is not enough - you must set your ego aside and make content about them.
Matt Herzberger of VisionPoint Marketing leveraged his many years of experience in higher-ed to share his methodology of creating academic program pages that attract and convert the right students.
He pointed out the importance of collecting input from multiple stakeholders - not just marketing but also developers and academic leadership.
Collaboration between departments crystallized as one of the main themes of the conference.
Brand strategist and podcaster Eddie Francis echoed the importance of collaboration in his energetic presentation on building an effective employer brand to attract top-notch faculty and staff.
Tim Wombles and Jenny Martin from the University of Missouri - St. Louis described their journey from having an unwieldy approach to website management to taking control of their site through more web governance and centralization.
The critical role of SEO in growing college enrollment and enhancing institutional reputation was another major theme and point of interest. Abu Noaman of Elliance provided practical tips and impressive success stories.
Most Cascade customers have a large pool of content contributors who are end users of the system, which can greatly enhance a website’s diversity of voice. However, most contributors aren’t trained in writing for the web, so providing ongoing training is key. But that’s not enough.
James Dobravec of Western University talked about the importance of CMS training. As the user base and the CMS evolve, documentation and training for content contributors are crucial.
Bart Caylor of the Higher Ed Marketer earned quite a few oohs and ahhs when he shared some of the many ways in which marketers can use AI tools for both mundane tasks and creative ones.
While there’s still a bit of trepidation about AI, it is clear that higher ed is ready to embrace it.
In one of the joint sessions, Charlie Holder provided a recap of recently released Cascade features and functionality, which served as a good refresher for some and an incentive to upgrade for others.
As every year, Bradley Wagner and Kat Liendgens hosted the Product Roadmap session to talk about Hannon Hill’s product philosophy and strategic direction of the platforms and to show what’s on the horizon for Cascade CMS and Clive.
"These roadmap sessions are always so helpful. I'm glad to see how thoughtful the Cascade team is," stated one session review.
The roadmap included new features and improvements for different types of users, including developers, administrators, marketing strategists, and content contributors.
Based on the comments in the chat, the overall themes seemed to resonate with the audience, who appreciate Hannon Hill’s thoughtful approach of focusing on functionality that improves the user experience for CMS users and website visitors and helps websites be more effective, resulting in better conversions.
Nothing is implemented for “demo dazzle,” as the presenters pointed out.
Attendees were particularly excited about SEO tools and the opportunities that AI opens up.
The two keynote sessions that concluded each day were eye-opening.
Day Kibilds of Ologie captured the hearts and minds of attendees by sharing her personal story and tying it to the fact that web content can be a barrier to education for equity-deserving students.
Sometimes, when we want to be helpful, we exacerbate the issue by creating more pages and more content - which contributes to cognitive overload and makes it even harder to find what you’re looking for as a prospective student.
Day suggested leveraging website personalization instead so that each individual is served the information they need and when they need it in a way that they can understand.
"This should be mandatory viewing for all admission, financial aid and high-level web site editors!" read one session review.
The second keynote, which closed the Cascade User Conference, was a round table discussion about the looming demographic enrollment cliff.
Dr. Allison Turcio of Siena College, Kristin Nichols of Nichols Higher Education, and higher-ed CMO Jaime Hunt of Old Dominion University generously shared their insights and thought leadership on the rather daunting subject.
The panelists gave attendees a sense of hope by walking them through changes that needed to be made in higher education in general and marketing in particular.
The session concluded with a passionate call for hiring more specialists instead of generalists.
"Valuable insights, indeed!" wrote one attendee.
Stay tuned for separate blog posts on the specifics of each keynote.
The conference provided so many invaluable insights and takeaways that it is challenging to narrow down the most important ones. This list is by no means comprehensive.
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Our customers are looking to establish more guardrails and best practices and provide help to end users. While there’s nothing wrong with giving end users a certain level of flexibility to keep them engaged in their content contributions, it is critical to put the necessary precautions and guidelines in place to preserve the integrity of your branding and ensure an effective user experience. Web governance tools must be an integral part of the CMS.
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Your website is not for you and not about you. Everything you put out there must be created and published with your audience in mind. Your website is not your org chart or a place for pet projects.
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Collaboration between departments is key to not just surviving the demographic enrollment cliff but to being successful long term.
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AI already offers many opportunities to enhance creativity, save time, and enhance the user experience for your audience. Higher education professionals seem to trade their initial skepticism for optimism and curiosity. Given the speed with which AI tools are evolving, we can expect it to be a game changer - and perhaps even level the playing field for organizations with lower budgets.
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We’re heading in the right direction with our products. Our customers sounded excited about the recent releases and loved what we are planning for the future.
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The Cascade community is second to none. We appreciate the presenters’ incredible generosity and willingness to share their expertise, and the wonderful interactions in the chat by all of our attendees.
Thank you all for making our 17th Cascade User Conference such a success!
Didn't make it to the 2024 Cascade CMS User Conference this year?
Don't worry. We extended the ticket sale until March 22.
All sessions will be available to view on demand until May 22, 2024.
