A Step Above

I have noticed that people are really going a step beyond. It started last Thursday, I was at our IACAC Spring Meeting and following a smashing presentation on technology in admissions, I asked the Director of Admissions at DePauw University (Earl Macam) some questions about how they manage their communication sequence. I of course wasn’t looking for specific mailings or anything like that, but I was curious about how they all keep track of it (I have a tendancy to want to be really organized and can’t always quite figure out how to do it. Not only did Earl tell me how they did it, he later e-mailed me a blank spreadsheet outlying how they keep track of things. That’s the great thing about Higher Education. People are competitive to a degree, but we’re all going for the same goal. We want kids to succeed. So we don’t mind sharing a little information to help out another institution.

Then, on Friday, I had another great experience demonstrating that “Step Aboveness. I saw Michael Buble in concert. My husband got us tickets for Valentine’s Day and they were AWESOME seats. Buble is a great entertainer and I love his music. There were mostly chicks there, but even my husband enjoyed himself (hip shaking notwithstanding). The thing that stuck out to me though is the way he went out of his way to keep the audience engaged and feeling valued. He said things like “I know you paid a lot of money to see this concert” and “Just because this is a large building I hope you still feel like it’s a concert with just a few hundred.” He went into the crowd and took a picture with a 12 year-old fan. He waved to people in the crowd. The thing that was really awesome though is that during his song “Home” he flashed pictures of popular Indy sites (RCA Dome, Peyton Manning, Lucas Oil Stadium, etc). That’s more than he needed to do.

So this whole week I’ve been on the lookout, searching for people going a Step Above in places other than Higher Education. I know, most of my 7 readers work in Higher Ed, and many work directly with admissions. But, what other places do you see people going a step above?