Making the Grade at Silverpoint User Conference '07

By Marisa Peacock (@marisacp51) Oct 19, 2007

Not only am I a content manager and designer; I'm a user, so it's not unusual that I find myself at a user conference.

As someone who works in the education sector, I know that it's hard to find the right balance of support and innovation that allows schools to keep up with Web trends while keeping within budget.

Silverpoint, Inc., based out of Baltimore, specializes in web solutions for schools and caters to those of us in independent schools, where constituencies extend beyond students to include parents, faculty, alumnae, and prospective students.

It can be a delicate balancing act between maintaining a brand and providing useful and effective tools for its users.

Although Silverpoint was founded over 11 years ago by Angelo Otterbein and serves more than 180 schools, it is currently hosting its first-ever Silverpoint User Conference.

The conference features a full day of sessions addressing help and training resources, data services, marketing solutions, among others, as well as roundtable discussions that allows users to mingle with other users and Silverpoint designers, developers and client managers.

It aims to not only connect users together in hopes of inspiring collaboration among schools, but also as a way for Silverpoint to connect with its clients so that they can work to better serve us.

At Thursday's keynote address, Otterbein spoke about Web 2.0 and its relevance to schools, emphasizing the need for collaboration among users and the importance of finding the right new media solution to fit a school's needs best, rather than trying to implement them all.

He also reported on ongoing improvements to Silverpoint's signature content management system, Schoolsuite.

Such improvements include a comprehensive front-end solution called Parchment, which will be formally unveiled during the conference, as well as a new dynamic help and training site.