Last week we held our Annual Conference at King’s College London. In spite of a clash with the AMSU conference (which we also attended on the Monday), we had a good turnout with 60 delegates from around 80% of our partner Student Organisations. I must say a big ‘Thank you’ to Endsleigh Insurance http://www.endsleigh.co.uk for sponsoring the event and Carol Thompson Ellis from ELSA for helping us sort out the venue at the last minute.

Hopefully we got our vision of how we see the market developing across and how we will be evolving our software this year. Without going into too much detail here, we want to provide something which is different from the existing social media sites which our audience (students) are arriving at University with. We firmly believe that the whole web will continue to become more social and providing contextually relevant, niche networks to existing communities (in this case student organizations) will have a firm place alongside the current guerillas in the room like Facebook, Myspace, Bebo.

The trend for companies in this sector seems to be, to look at what the organization needs to ‘tick a box’ in terms of providing a web presence and not looking at what will get their students actually interacting with their Union or College each day. Student media is in real danger of being lost in the considerable noise around the web unless it starts to differentiate and offer a new experience to what students are getting from news and social media sites. Interaction and engagement is the key. So, that is what we will be focusing on alongside our ‘core’ publishing, e-commerce and membership management tools. For those of you who were at the conference, you will know what we mean when we say we are trying to build a purple cow! For those that weren’t there, please have a look at this video from Seth Godin – http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.html

We will be working closely with our current partners over the coming weeks to ensure there is a smooth handover to the incoming student staff and we are all geared up for the new year.

We are very excited about the coming year and as part of our new communications strategy, we will be blogging here much more regularly. A different member of the team will be posting each week with an overview of what they have been working on…or maybe just to have a rant!

See you all soon.

Welcome again to the Oncampus company update. We all sincerely hope you had a fantastic easter and return rested and well.

Things have continued apace here at Oncampus HQ with the roll out of our new Bluetooth service we have been very busy over the easter period. If you are interested in using this excellent new service please get in touch.

Our UK roadshow is still underway and we are taking the time to show all non-Oncampus clients exactly how they may benefit from our free service. Look out over the coming weeks for our superb new product site, currently in production it will be not only an excellent indication of the potential of our system, but a guide to how it aids each aspect of your union from student to sabbatical and general manager to bar manager.

Speaking of products, we are currently developing our new product ready for the next academic year. Encompassing the best aspects of our current package and some very exciting new additions, (to coin a phrase) watch this space.

Here’s hoping you have a great April.

The Oncampus Team.

Oncampus is back, rested and ready to go in 2008, and straight off the bat we have already made an upgrade to our service. Every web-page now includes an option to search the entire site and indeed the entire web with Yahoo. This is the first of many new developments for the year ahead.

2008 also marks the beginning of our distribution campaign. Here at Oncampus we have been holding off from seeking new business so as to ensure we give our current partners a top class service. Now we’re back in the market place and will be agressively targetting all those Unions we feel could benefit form the Oncampus touch.

We would also like to welcome York College Students Union to the Oncampus network and would like to wish you all a Happy New Year.

Keep checking back for latest news and developments.

The Oncampus Team

Merry Christmas to all.

It’s been an eventful year for Oncampus, the team has grown and our services have undergone a complete reinvention whilst staying true to our original goals and ideals. From fresh new designs to innovative new additions to our range, we hope you’ll agree that it has been a good year to be with Oncampus.

Recently we held an event at Leicester Students Union called TNT comedy featuring top professional comedians and rookie student comics. Compared by Paul Tonkinson, it was an excellent night and we hope you’ll head over to the site and take a look.

January will see Oncampus unleash its product range across the remaining student institutions across the UK. The addition of new Unions to the Oncampus fold will enable us improve and develop the service we provide. You can be confident that we will extend our professional and ethical service across our distribution platform.

We would like to thank our partners for all their help, support and patience this year and we look forward to continuing to develop great relationships in the year to come.

From all at Oncampus to all of you, Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year

The Oncampus Team

Info@Oncampus.net