ICEF organizes worldwide conferences for language school professionals and has become a popular way to network within the language school industry. While we already discussed here on another article the Benefits & Dangers Of Visiting Language Conferences, let’s take a look if the ICEF conferences are worth the time and effort for your language school business.
Since 1991 ICEF has established itself as the industry standard in bringing together thousands of educators, student recruitment agents, and industry-related service providers.
The value of their network in bringing language business professionals together is undeniable.
The great benefit with the ICEF conferences is that they have worldwide spread out events that will give you the opportunity to network in big global scale. Even if you operate only locally in one country participating in an ICEF conference can broaden your view and might get you to adapt and learn from other internationally proven strategies.
Going to an ICEF conference can be the first step in acquiring certifications and credentials for yourself as a language school professional. Getting associated with the right network and gaining credibility is one of the main benefits of utilizing the ICEF conferences.
ICEF offers seven different opportunities for language industry professionals.
There is the partnership forum for International Higher Education institutions worldwide that happens this year 2018 in September in Geneva, Switzerland.
There are global workshops that happen ongoing in different locations worldwide through the year.
They are regional workshops similar to the global workshops but with a specific regional focus such as the ICEF Latin American, ICEF Beijing, ICEF Dubai or ICEF Moscow events.
There are specific destination workshops that offer specific focussed Know-How towards Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand.
Interesting for agents are the Agent Roadshows for international educators and services provides – the next interesting ones happening at ICEF Japan in February 2019 and ICEF Mexico in March 2019.
You also might want to consider their ICEF Agent Focus events and the popular “Work and Travel” events that provide sellers of work & travel and youth tourism products and services a great opportunity to network at the largest and most international B2B events of its kind.
One way to get yourself language industry insights is to get your hands on their professional handbooks that are offered as free and paid downloads at their site at https://icef.onlinetrainingnow.com/products where you can find out if what they offer is worth your time and effort.
Their ICEF monitor also offers great up-to-date unbiased insights into the language training industry
http://monitor.icef.com/
Before going to an ICEF conference yourself, it pays to look at all those resources and you also might want to consider to be included in their own language school search engine coursefinders.com (Sandy Allain helped them with this project in the past.)
Recommended Reading:
Benefits & Dangers Of Visiting Language Conferences
The Power Of Associations: What You Can Learn From The IALC
The Power Of Associations: What You Can Learn From FEDELE