I feel like ISTE has barely gotten started but I wanted to get down some first impressions.
I arrived at the GWCC yesterday a little before noon to register and figure out the lay of the land. I wandered around inside a bit then headed outside - Centennial Park is just down the block. My walk lasted longer than planned when I got caught in a freak rainstorm (seriously, Atlanta?!) and had to take cover for a while. I made it back in time to plant myself by an outlet to charge various devices and then get in line for the first session.
It was an Ignite session in which 13 people talked for 5 minutes (each had 20 slides). It was good for someone with late-onset ADD; by the time I was getting bored it was time for the speaker to change. I enjoyed most of the talks and found several new people to follow on twitter. The place was packed - I'm guessing because it was the first session and nothing else was going on but I got a nice seat up in the balcony.
After that I resumed my search for a comfy chair next to an outlet but had to settle for a patch of carpet. It was close to the beginning of the line for Saturday's keynote speaker, Ashley Judd. Yep, that Ashley Judd. She was billed as an actress and humanitarian, and I am still wondering why exactly she was speaking at an EdTech Conference. (I was reminded last night that she was a fill-in for America Ferrera.) I saw tweets that people had gotten in line 3 hours early, and I swear the line for the keynote was a mile long (in this building, that isn't stretching things that much!). During that wait I had a tweet from Megan Hayes-Golding asking if I wanted to meet up for dinner before our scheduled tweet-up, so I headed out to meet Megan, who so graciously picked me up.
After a quick dinner we headed to Stats to meet with some other math/science peeps. What a fun evening! It was so cool to talk with people that I'd only seen on Twitter, including Eli Luberoff, Rafranz Davis, and Riley Larke. I also made some new friends that I'll be happy to continue to get to know on the interwebs!
After a short night (<6 hours of sleep!) I headed back into the city early. Unfortunately, my phone charger decided that it was tired of working so hard and decided to take a vacation, so I got to go on a nice little tour this morning of stores actually open at 8 am on a Sunday morning that might carry phone chargers. Thank you, Target!
I've tried to get into one session but was closed out, chatted with Robin Matthews (whom I met last night) and ran into Ann Gregson, whom I haven't seen in years. I don't know about the tech aspect of this conference, but the social part sure has been fun!
I'm hoping to actually make it into a session today, but if these crowds hold up I'm definitely not going to be able to even come close to sticking to my schedule!
I arrived at the GWCC yesterday a little before noon to register and figure out the lay of the land. I wandered around inside a bit then headed outside - Centennial Park is just down the block. My walk lasted longer than planned when I got caught in a freak rainstorm (seriously, Atlanta?!) and had to take cover for a while. I made it back in time to plant myself by an outlet to charge various devices and then get in line for the first session.
It was an Ignite session in which 13 people talked for 5 minutes (each had 20 slides). It was good for someone with late-onset ADD; by the time I was getting bored it was time for the speaker to change. I enjoyed most of the talks and found several new people to follow on twitter. The place was packed - I'm guessing because it was the first session and nothing else was going on but I got a nice seat up in the balcony.
After a quick dinner we headed to Stats to meet with some other math/science peeps. What a fun evening! It was so cool to talk with people that I'd only seen on Twitter, including Eli Luberoff, Rafranz Davis, and Riley Larke. I also made some new friends that I'll be happy to continue to get to know on the interwebs!
After a short night (<6 hours of sleep!) I headed back into the city early. Unfortunately, my phone charger decided that it was tired of working so hard and decided to take a vacation, so I got to go on a nice little tour this morning of stores actually open at 8 am on a Sunday morning that might carry phone chargers. Thank you, Target!
I've tried to get into one session but was closed out, chatted with Robin Matthews (whom I met last night) and ran into Ann Gregson, whom I haven't seen in years. I don't know about the tech aspect of this conference, but the social part sure has been fun!I'm hoping to actually make it into a session today, but if these crowds hold up I'm definitely not going to be able to even come close to sticking to my schedule!
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