ITS Event and Expo

Last week we held our 4th ITS Event and the first that combined this with the Expo. Typically we've held the Event every 18 months and the Expo every year. Both require a significant investment in time and the Event includes more than 100 of our staff. The Expo involves a number of our vendor partners who welcome the opportunity to meet and talk with faculty, staff and students.

We want to share information about ITS services and create an opportunity to allow easy sharing of knowledge and experience. Yet we don't want to tie up our staff for long periods of time which could be used in developing and delivering services.

So, what's the best way to move forward? Should we continue with what we did this year and hold another joint event/expo in 18 months? In 12 months? Should we try a slightly different approach and hold the Expo every year as we have traditionally done, but with a twist to it? The twist could be to provide a distinct focus theme to accompany the Expo. For example, identity mangement may be one, security another, or communications/collaboration yet a third.

If we took this approach, we could hold a full Event every two years and in between hold the focus theme approach. This might allow us to continue to have an event for the entire community but maximize the investment time and return.

What do you think?