State College, here I come
Today I’m getting all my scrappy work stuff taken care of so I can head out to lovely State College, Pennsylvania on Sunday. I’m attending a conference there, which may or may not be B.S. Frankly, I think most conferences with high registration fees are pretty dumb, and there’s no way I’d go if I had to pay for it myself. The conferences I’ve found the most beneficial are the smaller ones that have a pretty narrow focus, like a specific piece of software or a small membership of groups with things in common (which are usually free or cheap), as opposed to the corpo-sponsored, general topic ones.
This one is the Educause Institute Learning Technology Leadership Program. Which category do you supposed that falls under?
Oh well; the hotel looks nice, and there’s a gym and a pool so I’ll have something to occupy my evenings. It might even be a nice break from regular work. I’ll probably be updating from there, since Internet access should be plentiful.
Educause brings back fond memories of my old employer. One of my first projects was to compile a list of people that attended one of their conferences. I remember feeling a little dirty about it because we used the list to send unsolicited email, but we got a good response. 🙂 I did have to deal with all the mean “where did you get my name – unsubscribe me right now!” reply emails. I feel the same about the content in those expensive, broad-scope conferences being pretty worthless. But I think the value lies in networking and sharing ideas with the other participants. Or at least that’s how I try to salvage the investment.
And don’t forget the swag! Get me some Post-its!