Dust Off The Suitcase

For the last few months (going back to August 2005), I’ve taken a self-induced hiatus for educational conference travel, but that is now changing quickly with three planned trips on the books in about a month’s span. Plans are now posted up on my IndyJunior map (and good to see Bryan Boyer’s source web site is back up- it had blinked out a few months ago), but the travel stickers between now and the end of February include:

January 29-31: San Diego, EDUCAUSE ELI Annual Conference. The real reason for the trip to San Diego is the continued search for the best fish taco. Always an adventurous honor, I’ll be co-presenting with Brian Lamb on “Beyond Blogging- Ready For Prime Time”, which is intended to be a look at blogging’s evolution to something more mainstream in education and its fit into the larger stew of social software. We are cooking up something “novel” in terms of presentation mode format. I cannot even say the ink is wet, it has not even been applied to the page, but it should be available for a sneak peek preview by the far end of this week. We’ll be looking for some remote participation from anyone out there. I am also a part of the New Media Consortium‘s announcement of the 2006 Horizon Report, the annual publication on new technologies. I hope to finally meet up with one of my blog heros, Bryan Alexander as well as other ed tech heavy weights who come to ELI.
February 7-15: Vancouver, CA for the Northern Voice 2006 Conference along with visits to colleagues at the University of British Columbia and regions nearby. For Northern Voice, I am representing the Great (obscure) Canadian Province of Arizona. I am most interested in meeting fellow blog-persons, as well as taking in the format of this grass-roots organized event as compared to the large, dull edu-cons. I’ll be at the Moosecamp as well, and I believe co-presenting with Canadian amigos Brian Lamb , D’Arcy Norman, and Scott Leslie. What are the odds of fish tacos in Vancouver? I’m not sure if salmon gets down to it.
February 23-25: Austin, Texas for the New Media Consortium Director’s Meeting. We’ve been NMC members for 3 or 4 years and I’ve always had some schedule conflicts with this gathering, but this year’s fit in nicely. Hoping to learn more about Pachyderm, new NMC initiatives, and learning from colleagues. Not sure about the odds of fish tacos.

I am looking most forward to this travel, mainly for the people I will get to spend time with. As much as I love being online, there is nothing like having some face to face time with people you respect and connect with. Beyond this, I am rooted in Phoenix (with numerous forays to our cabin in Strawberry), nose to the computer sccreen grindstone, trying to catch up.