The night before Building Blackboard Together 2026 officially kicked off, we sat down for dinner at Nuri Steakhouse with a small group of higher ed leaders. We enjoyed great food with people who spend their days actually running these institutions.
The conversation didn't stay small talk for long. It kept circling back to the same thing: how do you run university operations in a way that actually leads to better outcomes for students, not just cleaner compliance checkboxes.
That same thread followed us onto the show floor the next two days. One line from a session stuck with me: "If the information isn't understood, how could it educate?" Simple question, but it's really the whole reason this work exists.
What surprised me most, walking around, was how many people are already pushing accessibility forward at their own institutions. Not because a mandate told them to. Because they'd decided it mattered.
That dinner set the tone for the whole week. Sitting at that table, and everywhere we went on the show floor after, we were reminded why we're building this alongside the people doing the work every day.
