Some people may pay heed to the title of Glen Campbell songs (who is a local, and has even taken tours of the Phoenix Jail) and give me a call or email before landing at Sky Harbor Airport.
Micheal Roy, from Wesleyan, and I have exchanged emails for a few years but have always missed crossing paths at conferences. He emailed a few weeks back that he was coming this week for the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) meeting, and we set up a breakfast meeting time (which I managed to enter on the wrong datem, but we managed to chat over coffee this morning in the lobby of the Hyatt hotel). He arrived last weekend, and since I was out of town, I provided some recommendations for some desert hiking in the Superstition Wilderness area. I described my favorite, an intense hike with about 3800 ft of elevation gain up a place called Siphon Draw. I later tried to email him out of it, as it is not an easy one to find, and is not really even a trail. Mike managed to get up there, and enjoyed the view, as well as taken my other suggestion to drive out the Apache Trail… he managed the big loop all the way out to Lake Roosevelt, which is a fantastic, white knuckle; ride up and down volcanic canyons on a narrow dirt road.
I was glad we had a chance to discuss the progress of his excellent project of the Academic Commons (in theory I am on the advisory board, so far an easy job), Learning Objects Learning Activities (LoLa), and a new idea he is developing on open content/media development. I wish I could have stuck around and snuck into CNI, as other cool people I have yet to meet are hanging out there. But I have piles if work piled up in big piles.
So I am walking back to my car, and who is smiling walking down the sidewalk in Phoenix, but Cyprien Lomas, long time colleague from UBC and EDUCAUSE. “Cyp, what are you doing in my town?” We got a 5 minute chance to chat as we walked toward the conference area.
Hey, next time, call/email ahead!
