2017 WebFirst Conference a Success

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The panel on content marketing, mobile first, user stories and story boarding, from left, includes Kendall Curlee of the Honors College; Blake Puryear, the chief technology officer for Hayseed Ventures; Taylor McGillis of the Athletics Department; and Chris Nixon of University Relations.

The fifth annual WebFirst Conference was a hit with additional breakout sessions, a panel discussion and three afternoon workshops. This year's conference — on July 14 at the Donald W. Reynolds Center — was opened to attendees inside and outside the campus including the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce and surrounding colleges and universities.

The 2017 WebFirst Conference breakout sessions were built with our campus content managers and content contributors in mind as well as anyone with an interest in digital communication strategies. The sessions included tips for managing content, WordPress, digital accessibility and social media.

"The WebFirst conference is an incredible resource available to the UA community and beyond, right here on campus. I was so excited to see such a focus this year on areas that are so important now and in the future: mobile first, quality content, and the impact of search-engine optimization and analytics" said John Mark Cagle, public information officer for University Recreation.

This year the workshop included an afternoon panel discussion on content marketing, mobile first, user stories and story boarding. The panel consisted of subject matter experts from on and off campus which gave our attendees an opportunity to ask questions and gain insight and tips for their web content and marketing process.

"WebFirst has always been this collaborative atmosphere where we can meet and connect with web contributors across campus that we don't see regularly, but this year I especially loved the panel discussion. It was a great reminder of what we can learn from entities outside the realm of higher education" said Micayla Scott, assistant director of web communications for the Dale Bumpers College of Animal, Food and Life Sciences.

Workshops on Web Writing, Accessiblity

The afternoon concluded with three different workshops for attendees to choose from on web writing, digital accessibility and website help. The web writing and digital accessibility workshops provided hands-on training while the site help allowed website managers an opportunity to go through issues on their websites with members of the digital design and development team as well as from IT services.

"I've been attending the WebFirst Conference every year since it began, and it just keeps getting better. This year, I really appreciate the emphasis on specific tools, resources and processes that are available to anyone on campus," said Camilla Shumaker, director of communications, College of Engineering. "I learned a lot about Office 365, got ideas about how to stay organized and came away with some really helpful tips on accessibility."

If you were unable to make it to the 2017 WebFirst Conference all presentations were recorded and will be made available once close captioned.

We would like to say thank you to all that attended, sponsored, presented at and helped make this year's conference a hit.

If you would like more information about the WebFirst, visit WebFirst.uark.edu and sign up for our monthly WebFirst newsletter at mailto:https://webfirst.uark.edu/.