cc licensed flickr photo by laffy4k
Dear @KathySierra,
I realize that you are, like, a big internet A-list star with lots to do and horses to tend, but am a bit saddened my twitter direct message to you has not generated a reply. We are really, really, really interested in enticing you to keynote at the 2009 NMC Summer Conference, which will be in Monterey Bay. With some guesswork and my fuzzy California geography sense, this ought to be a short commute for you.
In August, when I was at WordCamp 2008, Matt Mullenweg shared with me that he had made all the arrangements with you to speak at that event over twitter direct messages– how cool is that? I thought it was worth a try.
But hey, I know people are busy, so this is my second effort, yes a bit tacky I admit. You gotta try.
I was a long time fan/reader of your Creating Passionate Users blog and miss your ideas and writing so much- I still keep the feed on my reader with the hope someday it may light up again. Twitter is its own space, but your writing always stood out as important and influential ideas. In March 2008, I was excited as it was my first time to hear you speak at SXSW (that was me in the 68th row, 3 seats in from the aisle). I’ve had fun copying your style on my graphic for the Twitter Life Cycle, where at least 80 people have shared their own stories of moving through the 7 stages of twitter starting from “This is the stupidest thing I ever heard of” to “I cannot stop!”. In fact, it made my WordCamp experience when after your talk there I thanked you, and mentioned this, and you said, oh you are CogDog!
So if this blog post ever reaches you (hopefully soon as we are planning our conference program), I hope to somehow raise your interest in speaking (and meeting with) our conference of more than 500 of the most creative people in higher education who come to our conference (see the highlights from the 2008 conference in Princeton for some samples). Besides our usual rounds of great sessions, demos, posters, we always have a bit of fun/excitement, whether it was attendees generating a shared set of original sound loops recorded on the John Lennon Bus or celebrating at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland:
http://media.nmc.org/2006/06/nmc2006.mov.
I am sure our audience of faculty, technology developers, librarians, administrators, museum educators would really get a lot out of your message- Creating Passionate Learners??
I hope you somehow get whiff of this message soon, cause we are putting together the program and want to see you on it!
your fan
@cogdog
Yay, my method worked! Got a direct message from Kathy just an hour after posting, and she has agreed to do a keynote
Alan, You friggin’ crack me up! Still waiting for an NMC sticker for my Mac!
OMG! How cool is that! You are the boss. As my daughter would say, you’re the bombdiggity.
Wonderful!
Good for you, Alan, and good for Kathy. Each of you has a gift for de-mythologizing and de-technoid-ifying tools that people can use. What’s more, Kathy’s enthusiasm is built on a framework for how people learn (hint: I think she’d agree that LMS stands for “lots more sitting”). Maybe I can get her interested in the Working/Learning blog carnival…
Will this be Kathy’s first return to keynoting? I know she cancelled quite a few speaking engagements after that terrible business. I am so excited to see her begin to venture out again. I can’t wait for her to start blogging again – since her Twitter-times and mine seldom overlap.
I don’t always agree with what she has to say, but she has such zeal and passion that she has left a void. Then again, even if that hadn’t been the case, it wouldn’t have made what happened to her any less inexcusable!
Cool move Dog…hehe
@Karyn Romeis: No, As I wrote in this post, I saw her talk at SXSW in March and WordCamp 2008 in August, and she has been doing other speaking gigs. I did plead with her to return to blogging, but she seems content being active in twitter for now. It is, after all, her choice.