EACUBO 2011 - XLerant

My day at EACUBO

I had the pleasure of participating in the annual EACUBO workshop at the end of March. Hands down, it was one of the best events I’ve ever attended.

For those of you who do not know EACUBO, the acronym stands for the Eastern Association of College & University Business Officers, and it is a regional group associated with NACUBO (the N stands for National, as you might guess). NACUBO’s mission is to promote sound management and financial practices at colleges and universities. More than two-thirds of all institutions of higher education in the United States are members of NACUBO.

I was there because one of our clients, Drew University, was presenting “Self Service Budgeting.”

Some observations about why this event went so well

  • It was a peer-to-peer event, so all the speakers had walked a mile in the audience’s shoes

  • For many people, friendships have developed over the years of coming to the event, so there was a lot of positive interaction & networking among the people attending

  • The folks at EACUBO did a wonderful job of organizing the event and thought of everything, including making sure all the technology was working properly before the presenters went on.

  • The topics chosen were timely and compelling

  • The time allotted (1 hour 15 minutes) was long enough to pace the presentations properly and allow time for Q&AQ

  • The speakers, the topics, the presentations were all on point and very well received

While I suppose there are other organizations like EACUBO in other industries, I don’t know of any with such high participation rates. If you do… let me know!

 

Read More