Thursday, October 26, 2006

CIT Recap

The League's Conference on Information Technology (CIT) is over. This year it was held at the Charlotte Convention Center.

Q #1. How many sessions on how to make podcasts do they really need in the session schedule?

Q #2. Why on earth did they think that a bunch of people interested in Ed Tech would want to sit around and listen to a keynote by a Republican U.S. House Rep (Sue Myrick)? Why would we want to listen to ANYBODY from the most do-nothing Congress in the history of the United States?

Q #3. Why did so many scheduled presenters just not show up at all? I've never seen so many cancelled sessions and others that didn't happen even though they weren't officially cancelled.

In closing, I should say something good about the conference. Okay ... my third presentation of the day on Monday was outstanding! Actually, I'm not (quite) that full of myself ... that's really what several people said at the end of the session, and even others when I saw them the next day. It was another presentation titled Web 2.0 Whirlwind. We basically got through 36 different web-based application, tools, and freebies in 60 minutes. All of that with a very slow Internet connection. Here's the handout for the session. Here's a link to several other presentations.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Barry - reading your blog was like reading my mind. The only other comment I would add is why would they give tickets to 2500 people and provide bagels for 100?

By the way, I attended your session on Monday and I am now a Barry Dahl follower!

A new fan,
Mary Beth Orrange

Barry Dahl said...

Hi Mary Beth,
Thanks for the comments. You know what they say about great minds...

Your 100 bagel thing is a good one. I'm going to steal that.

Take care, Barry

Anonymous said...

Barry - have you noticed how many workshops were about web2.0 things?
But I loved them all, specially yours! I also attended some podcast sessions and liked them as well. I came all the way from the Netherlands but the conference was worth every (air)mile!

Barry Dahl said...

Hi Willem,

Thanks for your comment. I saw the post on your blog about my session but couldn't tell whether it was positive or negative. I was going to get it translated to see what you had to say about it.

It's wonderful that so many people came so far for the conference. The best thing that we can do is share our thoughts and ideas with people all over the world. I hope you had a great trip. Thanks, Barry

Anonymous said...

@Barry,
Positive ofcourse! Don't doubt yourself:-)
I liked the way you went through all the links and possibilities.
When I give presentations I also tell everybody to keep the cellphones on "so the audience can see who's important, or who has a server falling out back home". 9 out of 10 put the phone off after that:-)
http://www.cviweblog.nl/charlotte/2006/10/web-20-whirlwind.html