Judges

Amber MacArthur

Amber MacArthur is a new media consultant, speaker, and journalist. As co-founder of agency MGImedia.ca, her team has managed social media initiatives for Tony Robbins, Canada Goose, Rogers, the American Dental Association, among other organizations. She is also an exclusive speaker with The Lavin Agency where she keynotes dozens of conferences across North America every year. As a new media journalist, she currently hosts Webnation on CP24, commandN.tv, and net@night with tech guru Leo Laporte. Amber's book, Power Friending: Social Media Strategies to Grow Your Business is in stores.

Cameron Chapman

Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience. She is an editor at Smashing Magazine and writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing. She's also the author of Internet Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.

Melissa Cheater

At 25, Melissa is a borderline "millennial" with experience in web dating back to the late 1990's. She combines an entrepreneurial spirit with a passion for communication technologies and online behaviours to provide marketing and best practice insight into the new world of communications. Melissa brings experience from both the private and public sectors to the table, and has worked within organizations as well as an established marketing consultant with Academica Group Inc. She focused the final years of her degree on online social networking and its implications, and went forward to break new ground alongside Academica GroupÕs Social Media & Web Innovation team. Their work with social networks and higher education marketing has been discussed nationally in publications such as MacleanÕs magazine and others. Melissa is currently a web specialist at the Richard Ivey School of Business, at the University of Western Ontario (where she graduated with a BA in Media Studies in 2006) and blogs at MelissaCheater.com.

Nick Denardis

Nick DeNardis is the Associate Director of Web Communications at Wayne State University. As host of the video blog, EDU Checkup, he reviews higher education websites from the point of view of a first time visitor, while critiquing the design, information architecture and code of the sites. He is a staff writer at .eduGuru, a higher education marketing and web development blog. He takes an active role in the higher education web community by sharing his thoughts and real world analysis in the Wayne State Web Communications Blog. He is also an officer for Refresh Detroit, a group of web professionals whose goal is to promote web standards, usability, and accessibility.

Matt Herzberger

Matt has more than eleven years of Web experience with eight years in higher education. He started in the corporate world as a production assistant for a higher ed Web design agency where he produced sites for various universities and colleges. He then moved into higher education as a designer and strategist for various higher ed institutions.

For more about Matt visit:
http://mattherzberger.com
http://bloghighed.org
http://twitter.com/mherzber
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mherzber

Mark Greenfield

Mark Greenfield is a highly regarded, influential member of the higher education web community. He is an accomplished speaker who frequently presents at a wide range of higher education conferences and meetings where his thought provoking commentary on the impact of emerging technology on college campuses challenges audiences to rethink their basic assumptions about web communications.

Mark has worked at the University at Buffalo for almost 25 years. He has been a full time web professional for the past 14 years, currently serving as Director, Office of Web Services. He is also a consultant with Noel-Levitz, a nationally recognized higher education consulting firm that specializes in strategic planning for enrollment and student success. He provides consulting services in the Web Strategy Service unit and helps colleges and universities fully utilize the web to reach their recruitment and retention goals. He is also the owner of the uwebd social network, a site created for higher education web professionals to connect and collaborate.

Connect with Mark at:

http://markgr.com
http://twitter.com/markgr
http://www.linkedin.com/in/markgr

Chas Grundy

Chas is the Director of Interactive Marketing at AgencyND Š a marketing agency within the University of Notre Dame. In more than a decade of web projects, he's seen some of the best and worst of what the web can do for higher education. He is a frequent speaker about web marketing in higher ed. His blog is at http://grundyhome.com.

Karine Joly

Karine Joly is a Web marketing professional, a new media expert and the Web editor behind www.collegewebeditor.com. She is also the founder of www.higheredexperts.com, a social networking and professional development community with more than 1,500 registered members working in higher ed institutions around the world.

Karine shares insights and observations in her Internet Technologies column published every other month in University Business.

Part-time Web editor for a liberal arts college on the east coast from 2002 to 2008, Karine has chosen to work full-time on her writing, presentations as well as Higher Ed Experts. She is also a consultant on new media and Web projects for other universities, colleges and schools.

Before focusing on Web 2.0 in higher education, she experienced first hand Web 1.0 as a Web editor at About.com, a top 10 Web property that is now part of The New York Times Company. Prior to the dot com boom (... and bust), Karine worked as a journalist for several radio stations, newspapers, and magazines in Europe.

She has a master's degree in communication from La Sorbonne in Paris and a Webmaster Certificate from Rutgers University, NJ.

Nell Kauls

Nell is the Editorial and Content Strategist with Seward Incorporated, a company specializing in higher education marketing and eLearning. She provides content strategy to higher ed clients so they can meet marketing objectives and support users in completing tasks. She also writes smart, useful web content, while providing training and tools to clients so they are empowered to improve their web content and content processes.

Nell also works with the Center for Transforming Student Services (CENTSS), which provides educational institutions with the tools and training they need to develop and deliver high-quality student services online.

Nell blogs about content development for higher education audiences at SewardInc.com.

Mike McCready

Mike is the Web Services Manager at Lethbridge College and has worked in the web industry for 11 years, with the last two years focused in higher education. He has focused on the integration of social media in the college's marketing / recruitment efforts. He shares some of his and other's insights on social media, higher education and marketing on his personal blog, www.mikemccready.ca/blog.

Mike Petroff

Mike Petroff is the Web Manager for Enrollment at Emerson College in Boston, MA. He leads web marketing and online recruitment efforts for undergraduate and graduate admission. Mike also chairs the social media group at Emerson as they work on coming up with ways to use the social web to recruit the next generation of students. You can find him on Twitter at @mikepetroff and as a blogger on .eduGuru.

Paul Prewitt

Paul Prewitt is a marketing and communications manager, specializing in e-marketing strategies including web development, email marketing and social marketing. Currently the Electronic Communications Coordinator at the University of Arkansas Alumni Association, he manages all electronic communications and marketing efforts for their alumni relations program.

Rachel Stewart

Rachel has been doing that online publishing and communications thing for higher ed since 1993 (think "Gopher"). For the past ten years she has been the Webmaster for the Tippie College of Business at The University of Iowa.

Darrin Samaha

Darrin Samaha is Blue Coda's founder and Director of Client Services. He leads the project management and creative teams and has developed Blue Coda's expertise in higher education, healthcare, and professional services. Some of Blue Coda's higher education clients include Harvard, MIT, Boston College, and Stetson University College of Law. Darrin has also developed Blue Coda's strategic partner alliances with best in class content management software providers Ektron and Sitecore. Darrin holds a BA from Tufts University, where he studied human factors psychology and GUI design. He is a member of the Massachusetts Information & Technology Exchange (MITX), the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, and the American Marketing Association Boston Chapter (AMA). When not working at Blue Coda, he plays drums in a band and is an avid snowboarder and kiteboarder.

Brad Ward

Brad has been working in the Higher Education setting since college, starting as a student assistant in the Marketing Department at the University of Illinois at Springfield. After graduation, he served as the Marketing and Recruitment Specialist at UIS for 1 1/2 years.

Brad then went to Butler University, where he served as the Electronic Communication Coordinator in the Office of Admission for nearly 2 years. As one of the few higher education professionals whose work is focused in social media / social networking, web content, email, and data research, Brad has taken web-based recruitment and admissions to new levels. His work has been recognized and cited extensively throughout the higher ed community.

He is now the Chief Explosion Officer at BlueFuego, a company dedicated to helping Colleges and Universities utilize the web to achieve their marketing and recruitment goals.

Brad is the co-creator of http://www.bloghighed.org, a site that aggregates many popular higher education blogs. Brad blogs at http://squaredpeg.com and has spoken at conferences around the world. To read what others say about Brad and his work, please visit http://tinyurl.com/aboutbrad.

Andy Foss

Andy has been interested in design and multimedia for several years. He started working on eduStyle in 2008 and is co-author of "The eduStyle Guide to Higher-Ed Homepage Design"

Cody Foss

Cody has worked in higher-ed since 2005. He worked for the University of Lethbridge from 2005 through 2008. In 2008 he left to do freelance work and he recently joined a smallish advertising agency. He started working on eduStyle in 2008 and is co-author of "The eduStyle Guide to Higher-Ed Homepage Design"

Stewart Foss

Stewart has spent the last 6 years working in higher-ed. He started as a junior web assistant and worked his way to managing the websites for first Athabasca University then Grant MacEwan College. In 2007 he founded eduStyle to try to raise awareness of best practices in higher ed web design. Since then he has spent his days watching the latest trends in higher ed web design. He's been working to spread awareness of best practices and draw attention to high quality web design in higher ed. He's a speaker on higher-ed design trends and improving design in higher-ed web design. He is co-author of "The eduStyle Guide to Higher-Ed Homepage Design."