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As Day 2 of the conference gets started I’m sitting here in the Blogger’s Cafe reflecting on Day 1.

As usual I spent most of my time at the Blogger’s Cafe chatting with new and old friends alike.

I did go to one session yesterday. Scott McLeod’s session on disruptive innovations.

Now I went to the session to support Scott and to hear what he had to say, but really I could have found the content he was presenting on the web at his K12online presentation.

We talk about how content is out there, how if you want to, you can find the content. So why do we come to this conference? If the content that is presented here is accessible anywhere anytime what’s the reason we’re here?

What’s the reason we come together face to face?

I’ve talked about this before on the blog and I keep coming back to this idea that when we gather at a conference like this, or in a classroom, that the conversation, the relationships, are what we are looking for.

One of the reasons educators give for virtual schools being bad is that students will loose that social connection….I’ve never heard a teacher say, “But they’ll lose the content”.

Yet, we build conferences around content not connections…about hour long sessions and not about the socialization of being together……and we’re suppose to be the most connected of the educators out there. We are suppose to be the ones who “get it” and yet we see conferences as content not as human connections.

There is a reason we come together face to face. We are social animals we want the social connections.

That’s why I spend most of my time hanging out in the Blogger’s Cafe. That’s were the social connections are made, the conversations that I have here cannot happen on the web…they are organic, they are real, they are friends new and old.

It’s getting the opportunity to meet Leo and Sachi LeFever from CommonCraft. Or the Co-founders of VoiceThread. It’s these connections that bring us together.

Does the same apply to our classrooms?

Should our classrooms be planned around conversations rather than around content?

How do we make this change?

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Edubloggercon09groupphoto.jpg
Last year I was pretty critical of EduBloggerCon. For me it was too big, too scripted, and…well…you can read the post.

This year….smaller, deeper, and more thoughtful. Exactly what I was hoping for and personally what I need to push my own thinking. It was one of those days where you went to one but watch others via Twitter. You wanted to go to all the sessions…and in some ways you did via the conversations that happened between the actual sessions.

Last year I said it was too big…around 250 people. This year around 75 people….not a bad size.

Last year it was to scripted….this year it was flexible, adaptable, and conversation based. Not adaptable enough for my taste but that was due more to the people that went than the organization of the sessions.

With empty sessions all over the wiki, nobody should complain that the conversation wasn’t what they needed. If you wanted a conversation the spots were available to put up a topic. I did just that wanting to discuss the changes that are happening with blogging because of Twitter and this whole “live stream” service (more on that later).

So….here are my take aways from EduBloggerCon 2009

Best Practice of PD (My live notes)
A great session that had a group of about 30 break into smaller groups, discuss ideas on what worked at our schools and then came back together to share as a group. We came to the same conclusions that it seems we always end up at:

  • Getting administrators on board is key
  • You have to meet teacher where they are
  • There are different approaches, no one right model/way to shift teachers
  • Change is hard
  • Change is frustrating

Build Your Own Tool (My notes)
A great session that allowed us all to dream about the tool we would create if we had a coder. That’s exactly what Mark Wagner wanted out of the session and has had success with when he rents a coder to create applications for him.

Where School Reform Meets Madonna:
This session was too deep for me to even take notes on….I was too busy thinking about the conversation that was going on. It was a great intense hour with one liners that filled twitter faster than any single one person could type.

My take away….or just good reminder…came from Scott McLeod when he reminded me that kids that are 14,15,16 years old are all about ME. How do we tap into that ME and make the world relevant to them? It’s where they are developmentally and it’s not a bad thing. These kids are trying to find out who they are, where do they fit, and the web and their web presence is a part of that. How do we tap into that ME, find what is passionate to them, and then find them an audience that makes learning relevant? It’s good to be reminded just where these kids are at. We talked about that they don’t use Twitter or blog because that is about spreading your message and not about ME. ME is about ME and my friends, it’s exactly what Facebook offers them…a place to hang out with their friends, talk with their friends, and be with their friends. Can we tap into this? Can we use this to our advantage? How do we use this in a learning enviornment? Should we?

Edu Blogging:
Lastly was a discussion I lead on where is EduBlogging heading and/or is it dead already?

It was a good discussion that talked about how the conversation is changing. That at a point in time we use to actually take time to read and leave comments on blog posts. Now we read, and retweet blog posts. We talked about how Twitter is the new aggregator and is replacing RSS as a way people are getting their information. On this blog for example, I have more readers that come via Twitter then I do via the RSS feed.

Because of Twitters live constant scrolling feed, we also talked about how the “life span” of a blog post is shrinking. I use to get comments on a blog post lasting weeks. Now I post a blog, it gets a comment or maybe two in a the first 10 minutes, gets retweeted for about 20 minutes and then it’s old news. I’ve also been running tests about the timing of blog posts. Being in Thailand I found that blog posts that I posted on my lunch hour had fewer views then those that got posted late at night. I have a theory this has to do with time zones as most educational twitters are in North America. So I’ve set different blog posts to go live at different times and have found that I get more readers on a blog post if it is posted around 3pm EST. This is a great time to release a blog post as educators on the east coast are just getting out of school and checking Twitter, while educators on the west coast are checking Twitter over lunch. Depending on the blog post I can see views fluctuate by the 100s.

Now…please do not think that I’m all about the number of readers. It’s just an experiment that I’ve been running (and seeing I’m posting this at 11pm EST we’ll see how it goes) to see if the “life span” of blog posts are getting shorter…so far….I think they are.

We then talked about our students blogging and what is the reason for it. David Warlick brought us back from a rant at one point to focus on that all of this, whether blogging, or twitter, or facebook updates, it’s all about conversations and communication. Yes, the conversations are changing. But in the end we’re just communicating with different tools. Whether it’s paint drawings on walls in a cave or quick 140 character Twitter messages. We have an internal need to communicate and that’s the fundamental skill we need to be teaching students.

So those are my “official” take aways from today. Of course all of these conversations have been had before, and could have been had on the web. The real reason I’m here are for all the conversations that can’t be had via the web. It’s shaki
ng hands, giving hugs, and just catching up. It’s the quick conversation over lunch or over a drink. It’s the time together with people that is the reason we all decend on Washington DC. I look forward to the rest of the conference and just being with other educational technologists.

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NECC is just a few days away which means the chatter is getting louder. I always love listening and reading first timers to NECC. It will be my fourth NECC and I’m looking forward to the conversations…always the best part!

As it gets closer I’m starting to set up my computer to best follow the conversation and thought I’d share my 5 Tips to a successful NECC.

1. GET INVOLVED!
This is the key to a great conference. People are so friendly and don’t feel like you need to be invited into a conversation. If you over hear someone talking, explaining something, or chatting about an issue that interests you…get involved! Introduce yourself and take part in the discussion. Conferences are about meeting people, putting twitter names and faces together, and geeking out! Don’t be afraid to ask for help, ask a question, or start a discussion. The Blogger’s Cafe and other cafe areas are great places to just hang out and be with other educators.

2. Get Twittered!
If you have been waiting to “get twitter” this could be the time and place for you to get it. Twitter will be the communication tool of choice for many and it will be a great way to keep up with the conference. The problem will be following the conference via Twitter as I have a feeling the conversations are going to be fast and furious. The best thing I can recommend is to get a twitter desktop application that allows you to set up and follow search terms in twitter. I use Seesmic Desktop but would also recommend Tweetdeck. Both will allow you to search for a term and then add a “deck” that will auto update and tweets with those words or terms in it. I suggest setting up two search terms. #NECC09 which is the tag for the conference and NECC for those who just mention the conference.

By using a desktop application it wil auto update and you won’t have to spend your time staring at and refreshing a web page.

If you find the information via Twitter to fast or not what you want you can refine your search by adding other words. For example do a search for #NECC09 and 1:1 if you only want updates from NECC about 1:1 computing. You can customize your stream of information anyway you want it. Remember Twitter is a live stream of content created by people. You just need to decide what content you want to follow and then follow it!

3. Live Chat!
Keep your eyes and ears open for back channel chat sessions happening during presentations. The URLs usually come via Twitter or by word of mouth in the session itself. If you find that nobody in a session you are attending has set up a back channel chat….then you can set one up yourself and use twitter to post the URL of the chat site.

Two great quick sites to use for back channel chats:

Tinychat

Chatzy

Play with both of them before you arrive at NECC so that you know how they work and you can be an active member in the chat.

4. Blog!
Take time to write down your thoughts about the conference. Blogging is a great way to reflect on your learning and conversations throughout the days. David Warlick wrote a post on how to use tags while blogging at the conference.

5. Take a time out!
Don’t feel like you have to go to every session. I did this my first year and ended up so tired by the end of the day that the conversations that went on in bars and over dinner I missed. Take some time to miss a session and join in conversations in the hallways and in the cafes (see #1). Also know that the conference doesn’t end when the lest session is over. There are twitter meet-ups, blogger meet-ups, and just plan old meet-ups all evening. Find a group and enjoy DC!

So those are my 5 tips to a successful NECC conference. What are your tips to a successful NECC?

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(Full Disclosure: I am the Educational Ambassador for Wetpaint.com)

http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/wetpaint_logo.gifLast Friday I was invited by Wetpaint to stop by their Seattle office for a “show and tell” session as well as discuss how the educational site was running and the needs of educators who use Wetpaint.

The Show and Tell was fun as each department showed off what they were working on. We got a tour of the new home page that launched that day by the development team. The publishing team invited me up to talk about the use of Wetpaint in education. The Wetpaint team was very enthusiastic to hear how their product is being used in education. They asked questions about how educators use the site and how it could be improved for educational use. It was a great hour that I got to sit and watch as the wetpaint team came together in a relaxed “show and tell” atmosphere to share what they had been working on and where they were headed.

I also was able to meet the CEO Ben Elowitz who thanked me numerous times for my work in supporting educators on Wetpaint.

The most meaningful part of my visit came with a 30 minute sit down session with key people at Wetpaint discussing the COPPA issue.

COPPA has been a pain in Wetpaint’s side since it was passed in 1998. We disucssed COPPA and ways that we might be able to allow students under the age of 13 to sign up for accounts. What is really frustrating to me as an International educators, is that the COPPA law does not apply to my school in Thailand yet our students can not take advantage of this great learning platform due to a US Federal Law. Because Wetpaint is located in the US (Seattle) they must comply with the law. It’s not Wetpaint’s fault, it is just the way it is in this digital age. It will be interesting to see if over time countries that have more relaxed rules get more technology start-ups.

As I sat discussing the issue with Wetpaint employees it was easy to see that it is not Wetpaint the company that is making things difficult but rather lawyers who get paid to keep Wetpaint safe, and the law itself. It was a great brainstorm session and I walked away with a deeper understanding of where Wetpaint is in trying to sove the issue, frustrated by the law, yet optomistic that we’ll be able to find a solution to the issue.

Wetpaint has done a great job supporting education over the years first with allowing ad-free wikis, then giving educators 250 uploaded files. They are also supporting the wiki workshop I’m running this Sunday at NECC by flying out support help for me all on their own dime. You have to love a company that is willing to not only give up revenue on their product but support education to the point of flying somone across the country for a one day training of 28 teachers.

The other great news is they decided to keep my on as the educational ambassador for another year. A great honor in helping to support some 2500+ educators who belong to the educational wiki. If you use Wetpaint it’s a helpful community to belong to. 2500 educators supporting each other with issues, ideas, and sites.

Thank you Wetpaint for your dedication and support to education and children everywhere!

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The second season of Shift Our Schools kicks off tonight as David and I along with Kim Cofino reflect about the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai.

We’re changing things up this year starting with a new website dedicated to the podcast. Click on the link above or the picture to head to the website.

We are in iTunes and ready to go! Click here will take you to our iTunes page where you can subscribe to the podcast to be downloaded automatically.

Once again this year we will broadcast live on the web. (Click on the Live page on the website). We have also set up a Skype account for the podcast and will try and have live call-ins for those that want to join the conversation. We’ll see how this goes in the first couple of weeks and decide whether or not to keep the feature (link down the sidebar on the website).

We’ve also started a Diigo group so that listeners can share links around our essential questions. Please bookmark them with the episode number that the link refers to.

As usual each podcast will revolve around an essential question. Here is just a taste of some of the questions we’ll be struggling with this year.

  • Where do you start the shift?
  • How to infuse information literacy throughout the curriculum?
  • How to shift wehn the administration is not on board?
  • How do you shift administrtors?
  • What are some shifted practices?

Why do I podcast?

It’s a different conversation, it’s talking through rather than writing through your thoughts. Honestly I was not planning on doing the podcast again this year, but I had people at NECC and at Learning 2.008 tell me they were waiting for us to start the show again. So, I do it not only for my own reflection and thought process but for those that listen as well. It’s about sharing ideas, thoughts, and knoweldge and I hope that is what we do on some level.

You can get a schedule of the podcasts on the website. We record live at 7pm Bangkok Time (GMT+7) or 8pm China time (GMT+8). The podcast focus on International Schools and International Education, we hope you enjoy this small glimpse into the world in which we educate.

I had all intention of writing a final blog post from NECC on what I was thinking the last day of the conference and where do we go from here, but you know what…it’s summer time and right now my priorities are with spending time with friends and family. We’re down to just 3 1/2 weeks before we fly out to our new home in Bangkok and just trying to prepare for departure has me running around. So much daily life stuff to take care of when really I just want to sit and enjoy the summer.

So today I’m doing just that. I’m sitting here on the porch with my mom getting stuff done.

NECC:

It’s been interestings reading what everyone has posted about the conference. Some people agreeing with my take on the conference and others saying that my posts are “rather scathing“.

I mean no disrepsect to ISTE or NECC. Trust me….I know the work it takes to pull off a conference, and not one near the size of NECC. My thoughts on the conference are just that, my thoughts and what I was needing or looking for from my experience there. Learning is individual and we all learn in different ways and in different formats.

For me NECC is a time to play with new tools, to have disucssions, and most importantly to meet my network in person. I get four days a year to meet the people I communicate with online, people I consider real friends from all over the US and world. Last year Blogger’s Cafe gave us a place to play with tools and have conversations. It was out of the way and there were no expectations of things to happen there. It was just what the name inferred. A cafe with a relaxed feel and friends new and old popping in and out. Last year Blogger’s Cafe was working for me. I would go to a session come back, blog the session, and have conversations. On top of that….the Starbucks stand was just a short walk away. 🙂

I was looking for that same feeling this year and never did find it. Many people did find it in different places and I’m glad they did. I just never found my grove.

I enjoyed my time with friends and meeting new people in my network and just people in general. I taught four people how twitter works and had some great conversations about international schools and things we’re doing Internationally.

There is a teacher shortage internationally right now and if you are a teacher who understands the changing world of technology and would love to travel for a couple years Amanda DeCardy wrote a great post on getting you started. You’re also a step ahead as you know you can call on your international network of teachers to help you out along the way. 😉

I gained a lot from NECC on conference formats and trying to meet the needs of all learners. That’s what we are at a conferenc; we’re learners and being a conference orgainzer is not much different then being a classroom teacher and trying to meet the needs of all the learners in the class/conference.

It just didn’t happen for me this year….but it’s about trying things new. NECC tried somethings new and now has an opportunity to go back, reflect, and see if the conference worked.

For my part I took away some valuble thoughts on conferences and creating spaces. Not what I went to NECC for, but still came away with something useful that I can use.

So the first full day of NECC 2008 comes to an end and I find myself thinking more about conferences, how to create them, manage them, and make them relevant to participants then I thought I would. Have I mentioned the conference we’re doing in Shanghai? 🙂

I’ve been thinking a lot about spaces and how important it is to create spaces for learning and conversing at the conference. Today I ran into cognitive overload. Ewan McIntosh does a beautiful job of explaining exactly how I was feeling today.

At one point I literally had to find a quiet corner in the Hyatt to just take a breathe and relax. I felt like calling a time out and just pausing everything for a second.

So here are my thoughts on designing and organizing a conference.

Pace: The pace of the conference is an important aspect to consider. Chris Lehmann and I talked about this for a bit yesterday. How much time do you give between presentations? How many presentations do you have during a session? Both of these help to determine the pace of the conference. At NECC this year the feeling of many (including me) is that the pace of the conference is just to fast. Many sessions are closed to participants 15 minutes before they are do to begin. One person in the Blogger Cafe today talked about showing up 30 minutes early to get into a session and the line was already forming outside. Here at NECC the sessions run 60 minutes with varying start times in between sessions. With sessions filling up so fast, people feel an urgency to get to sessions quickly and then once there, feel like they can’t “vote with your feet” and leave a session because there is no guarantee that there is another session with space.

Scale to Size: I talked about this in my last post and I think it is something you must make a priority if you are planning any type of conference. Your conference venue and the number of sessions you run per hour are two factors that you need spend time thinking about. At NECC this year I saw a sign that stated there were over 13,000 participants. A quick count of the number of presentations that were offered at 11am this morning was 33. A little simple math 13,000/33=394 people per presentation. 394 people per presentation means you need to have a venue that can hold 33 sessions at a time and each room must hold 394 people….good luck!

I don’t know what the perfect size of a session is but close to 400 people per presentation seems a little big to me, and some of the rooms here were never made to hold 400 people (some have been closed to participants due to fire code violations).

There is such a thing as to much: We get excited about trying new things, trying to expand these conferences to meet the needs of everyone. 13,000 educators have a lot of needs, and us in the edublogosphere have needs we want met as well. Last year NECC set up the Blogger’s Cafe for us and it was an amazing area where conversations flowed, people connected, and ideas were spread.

This year the Blogger’s Cafe has not been that for many. The placement of the Cafe this year has a lot to do with it. Last year (as many of us in Atlanta will recall) the Blogger’s Cafe was out of the way, down a long hallway. You had to make an effort to get there, you had to want to go there to engage in conversations. This year the Blogger’s Cafe is on a many thoroughfare. People are coming and going constantly and many people grab a chair real quick to check e-mail as they are passing through. In between sessions the space is very crowded and over flowing with people. Twice today I went and couldn’t find a place to set my bag down. Could NECC have put the Blogger’s Cafe in another spot? I’m not sure, from the looks of things they are pretty crammed into the conference center here the way it is.

Secondly, NECC Unplugged is also being held in the Blogger’s Cafe. Would it be better in another spot? I think we all agree it would…but where? The Blogger’s Cafe was never made to hold “sessions” of any type. The conversation atmosphere does not lend itself to even quick 7 or 10 minute demos of programs. The Blogger’s Cafe serves a purpose as a place to converse face to face. Trying to make the space something it isn’t adds to the cognitive overload that I think many of us are feeling at the conference this year.

There is such a think as doing to much and I think we found that this year at the Cafe. Not every great idea needs to be played out.

As I continue to think about the Learning 2.008 conference I can’t help but hope that I have learned some valuable lessons from NECC this year.

  • We’re hoping for 500 people meaning we need about 20 presentations a session to keep our numbers around 25 people a presentation
  • We need to manage the pace of the conference. We try and do this using an unconference model where conversations can go for days and there is no obligation to ever stop a conversation giving a relaxed feel to the learning space.
  • Expand without over doing it: We will use Twitter this year again, tweak the way we used it, but continue to use it as our synchronous communication tool during the conference.

It’s been great as people have come up to me during the past couple of days and have wanted to know more about our conference and how we run it. I don’t think you can directly compare Learning 2.008 to NECC between the size and the fundamental belief in conversations being the main focus of learning the two conferences are just different. But I do believe we can learn from each other on what a conference in the 21st Century needs to feel like.

Back from EdubloggerCon for the day and taking a break in the hotel room, catching up on the latest NECC chatter and reflecting on the day.

I was worried before I got here of two things:

1. That EdubloggerCon this year would be different, to big, to scripted, and not unconference enough for me.
2. That the NECC Unplugged sessions would over run the Blogger’s Cafe and leave us no place to converse.

I hate to say it but my worries about #1 came true today. Last year in Atlanta it was small, we had three break out sessions with the largest session having about 30 people in it. This year we had three break out sessions with each group having 50 to 80 people in it. Much like Twitter these days, EdubloggerCon failed to scale in size and voices, learning, and conversations were lost.

I think two things happened that we (as we all must take responsibility for EdubloggerCon as we create it) over looked.

David Jakes brought up the point that we overlooked the physical space of the conference and what we were given. The large room we used was not set up, nor did we ever take the time to set it up to really be used in a way that included/engaged people in a conversation. I went to 1 1/2 sessions in the room. Look at the picture to the right…does that look like an unconference, conversation session to you? I walked out of the second session as I was way off to one side, had a hard time hearing, and was not engaged in the conversation titled: If the Leaders Don’t Get It, It’s Not Going To Happen.

Secondly, I think we need to remember who we are…who this is for. We talk all the time about getting outside the echo chamber and let’s face it, EduBloggerCon is one big echo chamber. I look at the title of the session above and think: Yeah….we know that. We (90% of us here and watching live) know that leaders don’t get it and if they don’t get it it’s not going to happen…I know this already and the discussion did nothing but tell me that others get it too, that there are many ways to solve this issue, but all our schools are different and we solve the issue in different ways.

By 1:45ish a bunch of us who were frustrated started heading to the Blogger’s Cafe. By 2:30 it was the unconference many of us were hoping to find. The picture to the left shows what happened. It started with about 5 of us and ended up being a good 30 people in the Blogger’s Cafe. Here’s the difference….although there were 30 people there there were probably 5 or 6 different conversations happening. People grabbed chairs, computers, camera and just started talking. I would engage in a conversation to my right, over hear something on my left and turn and join that conversation. I watched (and filmed) Will Richardson jailbreaking his iPhone as I talked with Bud Hunt and Will about Mogulus, a live streaming service I had never heard of before.This is what learning spaces should look like, this is how learning happens, and what many of us were expecting to find. Too bad we found it late in the day and outside of EdubloggerCon.

So my second fear is that this picture above will not be the norm of the conference as it was last year at the Blogger’s Cafe. I’m scrolling through the NECC Unplugged planning wiki and as of Monday there isn’t much time for these conversations to happen. I’m worried these type of get out the tools and play sessions where we are all learning and teaching will be forced out of the Blogger’s Cafe. They are unplanned, unscripted, great discussions around tools, ideas, and just plain old good fun.

Erin who is experiencing NECC from Rochester, NY and watched a couple of us playing with Mogulus had this observation:

But the important thing is that they sit around and play with things. They don’t wait for the administrator to come in and tell them what to do. They don’t wait for the list of Time Magazine’s Top 100 websites. They play, they try things out and they talk to each other about what works and doesn’t work. Will had no idea why he should jail break his phone, nor did he know how. But he had the resources he needed and he went after them.

This is why I’m here! So that’s going to be the focus for the rest of the conference for me…to play with new things, to try things, learn things, and discuss things. I don’t need heavy discussion on why leader’s don’t get it. I don’t need to sit and talk about the same things we always talk about. No, I’m going to put myself in Beta mode and go out there and learn and teach.

Brian Crosby
was my motivator behind this approach as we talked about the day over a drink. Last year both Brian and I spent a lot of time at the Blogger’s Cafe. Brian learned all about RSS Readers and using Flock to publish to his blog. I spent my time wrapping my head around Twitter and back channel chats. We both used the time as “Beta Time” time to learn something new, to be taught something new, to take risks, laugh, and talk about how these tools, these ideas can be/might be using in a classroom. We were looking for something new not rehashing the old.

That’s what I think this conference needs to be for many of us (if you’re reading this you’re probably one of them!). As Brian and I talked he was telling me about some of the problems he’s having with his WordPress install and how he would just like to learn more about WordPress. I know wordpress and tomorrow will make myself available to those that want to talk about, learn, or play with WordPress. No time limits, no obligation, just “Beta Time” to share information. If you’re at NECC look for me in the Blogger’s Cafe. If you’re not here look for a tweet and if you are interested in joining in the learning we’ll try to fire up a live stream.

I personally would love to have some conversations around advance podcasting skills/software and any ideas you have about Wetpaint and how to make that product better.

Maybe this conference is about the tools, this is our time to learn, to push forward, and think of what’s next and where do we go from here. We have an opportunity here with so many of use in person to make this Beta Time a time to really push tools, push our thinking on how to use them in the classroom and then go back to our schools and help teachers use them. That’s why I’m excited for David Jakes and Dean Shareski’s presentation on PowerPoint. 🙂

The best 4 minutes of the day by Dean Shareski.

It’s all Beta….let’s treat it as such!

Landed in San Antonio today around 1:30 from Seattle. Left at 5:15am….is it bad when a 5 hour flight seems short and you actually look forward to sleeping upright on the plane?

We arrived with not air trouble, checked in and then drove back to the airport to pick up my sister-in-law. We only have 5 weeks this summer to spend time with friends and family so scheduling time is important. So this trip is a conference for me and time for my wife, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law to spend some time together (Sister-in-law works in AZ).

We went out to dinner tonight and then walked around a little before coming back to our hotel room where I found a tweet from Will Richardson who was live streaming from a restaurant on the River walk. Five minutes later I’m having a drink with Will, David, David, Dean, Brian, Laura, Bud and others.

So let NECC begin! The conversation started tonight..as it usually does when you get a bunch of us together and I know tonight was only the beginning. I’m still thinking about things that were said and will continue to reflect on tonight’s conversations as we head into the EduBloggerCon tomorrow.

So much to learn, so much to discuss, here we go with NECC08!