Teach42

I’m way behind on my blogging. Did I mention that I weaseled my way onto an education panel at the Office 2.0 conference? Oh yeah, too late. That was last week. Yikes, I’m way behind.

So here’s the story. I read about the Office 2.0 conference last year and it sounded amazing. The organizer, Ismael Ghalimi, is the person who turned me on to DabbleDB as well as many other 2.0 apps. His Office 2.0 suite is a true marvel. So I had this one penciled in as one to attend since last year.

I submitted to be a presenter and Ismael mentioned that Steve Hargadon was putting together an education panel and threw me on that. It was a fantastic group of people to be on stage with, and I was thrilled to be a part of it! Included on the panel were:

Steve Hargadon (Moderator), Editor, Classroom 2.0
Kyle Brumbaugh, Technology Coordinator, San Mateo Union High School District
Josie Fraser, Advisor, Childnet International
Adam Frey, Founder, Tangient
Anastasia Goodstein, Editor, Ypulse
Karen Greenwood Henke, Founder, Nimble Press
Rushton Hurley, Founder, Next Vista for Learning
Sylvia Martinez, President, Generation YES

So, one of the other hoooks for attendees was that every person who attended the conference got an iPhone. Yes, you heard me right. iPhones for everyone. As it says on the conference site:

Gathering over 500 people using the exact same mobile device will allow us to learn a lot about user interfaces, workflows, and usage patterns for mobile online applications. In essence, this upcoming edition of the Office 2.0 Conference will quickly turn into one of the largest experiments on mobile productivity & collaboration ever attempted.

Great idea. But it in reality, it was sorely disappointing. When you get right down to it, there were two ways to use the iPhone. Etelos created a portal for the agenda, upcoming events, getting contact info and IM’in people. While flaky at times, it was innovative, it was useful, and it was one of the cooler things about the conference. It worked great on the whole. The other way to use the iPhone was to watch live or pre-recorded broadcasts of presentations by using Veodia. This too was incredibly cool. Watch any presentation live or later in pretty darn decent quality. You can click here to watch the education panel (couldn’t get it to embed for some reason).

However, that was about it. I had really high hopes to see what 500 people with iPhones could accomplish. Our panel was the only one that I saw that tried to use them to get interactive with the audience. Nobody tried to use them to collaborate in any way beyond exchanging contact info. None of the others sponsors stepped up to the challenge and developed any iPhone interfaces or focused on mobile collaboration. On the whole, I was stunned by how few people tried to take advantage of the very level playing field for the event. For the most part, the iPhone really was just a gimmick.

That being said, the conference itself was interesting. There were some strong panels, and plenty of big names. I learned about several products and sites that I was unfamiliar with and got reacquainted with some I hadn’t looked at for a while. It was incredibly well organized, the connectivity was superior and everything ran smoothly. Ismael really did do a hell of job and I’m thankful he let me be a part of it.

The real highlight of the conference for me was the talks that I had with the other panelists. Many of us went to dinner and for a great meal and even better conversation. I also had the pleasure of heading back to the airport with Sylvia Martinez and learned about the crazy trail around the EdTech landscape that has led her to Generation YES, a program that I thought I knew all about and it turns out I knew very little.

All in all, a fun conference to participate in and an inspiring panel to be a part of!

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