3 takeaways from ICEF Berlin 2019

Ausgezeichnet.

That, friends, is German for ‘excellent’ and is the only word that seemed appropriate to sum up our trip to Berlin earlier this week for the ICEF Conference.

Team TAP descended on the German capital en masse and had a blast - thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth to say hi and find out more about how we can help supercharge your peer recruitment efforts.

Because the only thing we like more than learning stuff is sharing that learning so others can benefit from it too, here’s a trio of key points we brought back to TAP HQ with us.

The peer recruitment movement is underway!

Universities are really starting to tune into peer recruitment and are understanding that their international students could be powerful online advocates for them. 

The fact that the concept of peer recruitment is now becoming familiar to people in international education gives us a warm, fuzzy feeling. In fact, they not only know what it is but also recognise its relevance and potency. This is across the board with both providers and agents.

Agents and providers

We left Berlin with a tonne of great learning about the agent/provider relationship, and how peer recruitment is becoming a mutually beneficial tool for achieving the shared aim of making prospective students informed and confident in their higher education application.

Again, cue the warm, fuzzy vibes.

Yer a wizard, Harry

Lastly, forgive us for blowing our own trumpet, but our own Nik Higgins did a terrific job as part of the equally terrific and interactive seminar on conversion presented by our friend Mark Pettit from Edified. 

Nik’s part of the seminar gave those watching a magical analogy to highlight the value of peer-to-peer conversations and, by extension, peer recruitment to an international student’s journey to university. How? By comparing said international student’s path to that walked by the world’s most famous boy wizard on the road to arriving at Hogwarts; it was only personal interactions with Hagrid and Ron that persuaded Harry to run at wall between platforms 9 and 10 and actually get on that train.

Makes sense, right?

That’s it!

Thanks ICEF, it was a blast! We would love to tell the story involving our CEO, a dancefloor and some tight trousers, but this blog’s aim was to give you three key takeaways from ICEF, and we’ve done that already. 

Alas, trousergate will stay undocumented...unless, of course, you want to get in touch and book a demo of our platform. Then we’d be happy to share the gossip!

See you next year, Berlin!