GuidebookEDU is proud to be kicking off our Digital Leadership in Higher Ed series starting today. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be engaging in a conversation about what exactly it means to be a Digital Leader in the higher ed space. We’re curating perspectives from professionals across the industry - educators, influencers, and technology vendors on our blog. In honor of the conversation, we’re bringing along a friend - student affairs educator Dr. Josie Ahlquist. Josie is a digital leadership educator, discovering the intersection of social communication technologies and leadership development in Higher Education. As a researcher, speaker and blogger she believes in challenging how higher education thinks about social media for community building, leadership development and student services. In addition she serves as adjunct faculty at Florida State University, Leadership Studies program. She blogs at www.josieahlquist.com, connecting scholarly research to best practices for students and educational leaders. As an emerging social media scholar, she is a co-author in the Handbook of Student Affairs Administration textbook, writing the chapter on Computer-Mediated Communication and Social Media. Finally, she is a co-editor and author in both New Directions in Student Services, "Engaging the Digital Generation" releasing this fall and New Directions in Student Leadership manuscript called “Going Digital in Student Leadership” scheduled for release in Spring 2017. We have formally invited Josie to serve as GuidebookEDU’s Digital Leadership Partner. We recognize her incredible expertise in the realms of digital communication and higher ed leadership and want to show the world the great things that can be accomplished when educators and vendors work together towards a mutual goal. Through our conversations, we hope to shed some light on where ed tech vendors get their ideas, how higher professionals can lead the pack on technology adoption, and how the two groups can work together to move the entire industry forward. It all started several months ago with a conversation about ACPA & NASPA Professional Competency Areas for Student Affairs Educators and their recent inclusion of new technology competencies. Providing guidelines for skills relating to technology seemed like an absolutely necessary move in our current landscape. In order to attain many of the competencies contained in the document, however, we agreed that there needed to be a dialogue between educators and the companies creating the technologies that universities use. If either operates in a vacuum, it’s impossible to grow in parallel. This month we’ll offer up several pieces to get the conversation started. Look forward to the following posts in our Digital Leadership in Higher Ed series:

May 12 - Six Digital Leadership Skills in Higher Ed

Josie Ahlquist asks “What does leadership look like in our globally connected and viral-fueled society?” Using the new student affairs tech competencies, as well as research on leaders in higher education, she’ll shed light on our new concrete direction.

May 17 - How Does an #EdTech Company Approach Digital Leadership?

Guidebook will pull back the curtain and discuss how it takes its cues and philosophies from the higher ed world, while still injecting its own brand of innovation. Through some of Guidebook’s most common mobile app use cases, we’ll look at how our clients have informed our own development and how our product has influenced paradigms surrounding campus communication.

May 24 - How to Create a Productive Partnership with a Tech Vendor

Is there a relationship to be had beyond client-vendor when it comes to working with tech vendors? Is it possible to create a truly mutually-beneficial partnership with a company that also sells you a product? Josie Ahlquist and Guidebook will work together to answer these questions and offer up strategies for creating collaborations that count.

June 1, 1:00 PM ET - Live Chat: #SAPros and #EdTech Unite!

Join a live conversation on Google Hangout, where a panel of #SApros and #EdTech vendors will discuss how they’ve created collaborative relationships with each other in the past, strategies they use to communicate across industries, and stories from the technology development front lines. We guarantee a lively, enlightening discussion enjoyed by all! We’ll be live at this link.

Join the conversation

We want you to be a part of the action all month long. You’ll be able to follow along with Guidebook and Josie by following #DigLead on Twitter. You can find Guidebook with @guidebook and Josie with @josieahlquist.