Illuminations and Insights

EA's Chief Operating Officer Libby Pier alongside CEO Andrew Rice, attended and presented at SXSW EDU 2025. During the conference, Libby had the opportunity to participate in engaging hands-on workshops, build community with other people within the education technology field, and facilitate a mentoring session about the intersection of EdTech and education research. In this blog, Libby reflections on the five phrases that defined her SXSW EDU experience: Unsexy Tech, Compost Memo, Mentorship, Multidimensional Infrastructure, and Community.

 Each year, we have the opportunity to attend and present at several conferences nationwide, showcasing our work and our Ed-Fi-enabled product stack. These events provide opportunities to engage with educators, administrators, district leaders, and fellow Ed Tech organizations, fostering collaboration and sharing insights. In 2024, we participated in the 20+ conferences, including SXSW EDU, AeriesCon, Ed-Fi Alliance’s Technical Congress, the Knowledge Alliance’s Fall Forum, Ed-Fi Summit, South Carolina Ed Tech, and the Florida Educational Research Association’s annual meeting. In this blog, we recap our key takeaways and lessons learned from the conferences we attended this year.

Every fall, SC EdTech hosts South Carolina's largest educational technology conference. The primary goal of the conference is to bring educators, administrators, technology professionals, college faculty and staff, public and academic librarians, business and industry trainers, industry representatives, and policy makers together to think, discuss, listen, and learn the best strategies to plan for and use educational technology in our schools. We had the amazing opportunity to send Education Analytics’ staff to SC EdTech to connect with school districts, ed tech leaders, and current and potential partner organizations in South Carolina. In this blog, we share what EA staff learned from their time at SC EdTech 2024.

Every fall, the Ed-Fi Alliance hosts its annual Ed-Fi Summit to bring together state and local education leaders, EdTech providers, educators, and technical experts who utilize data to solve education’s most pressing issues. Several of Education Analytics’ staff attended Ed-Fi Summit 2024 to connect, present, and learn. In this blog, we share some of their insights.

Education Analytics is a proud member of the Knowledge Alliance (KA), a fellow non-profit organization focused on improving K-12 public education by advocating for robust education research. Earlier in September, CEO Andrew Rice and Chief of Staff & KA Board Chair Libby Pier attended KA’s Fall Forum, engaging in discussions around improving and investing in the education-to-workforce pipeline. In this blog, Libby Pier highlights our key takeaways from this year’s forum along with discussing her experience working with the KA Board and KA President and CEO Rachel Dinkes.

Every year the Ed-Fi Alliance hosts its Technical Congress to bring together individuals from across the ed tech community, including data scientists, chief architects, IT application developers, software engineers, educational technology developers, and more. This year, we had the amazing opportunity to send Education Analytics’ staff to Tech Congress to connect with school districts, ed tech leaders, and current and potential partner organizations. In this blog, EA staff share what they took away from their time at Tech Congress 2024.