A disappointing CECA/CEMA Conference in Hartford

Caution, rant ahead

My brethren and sisteran of CECA/CEMA, I cannot tell you how angry I am after attending your conference at the Hartford Convention Center today. I have to vent it all here tonight. Now let me begin by stating that I get it. It is an all volunteer effort. It is in a new venue and it was a marriage of money between the techies and the librarians to get the new Connecticut Convention Center. I did my time on the CECA Board way back, I did my time when CECA did two conferences (Fall in the western half of the state, Spring in the east). This year was a hard one. And yet, when on earth will you get it!

I am sorry. The conference was filled with lots of talk (but very little actual classroom practice) on Web 2.0. Where were the Web 2.0 tools for this conference? Where was the wiki set up? Where were the google docs? What was the common tagging format for the conference? Where were the Flickr photos being uploaded? Your keynote last year was David Warlick for God’s sake! He showed us how to use these tools in his presentation 12 months ago. Did it all fall on deaf ears? Here you have a couple of thousand people in a perfect place to collaborate on line - it was the POINT of your keynote in 2006!

What would have happened if there was a preset open wiki with each presentation having a page? Could we not have all edited and combined our notes into one big wiki that would have been there for everyone? Did anybody put the conference on Warlick’s Hitchhikr? Did the K12 Online conference running these two weeks ever get a mention (except by the one presenter who said it was over)? Nothing on the revised NETS adopted in June 2007? Did anybody Twitter? We are ostensibly the educational technology leaders for the state of Connecticut and you are the leaders of those leaders.

You chose as your keynote, Dr. Henry Lee (more about Henry later) and you put Kathy Schrock in a room that held 30 which crammed into 60, and others walked away because there was no room. You put Will Richardson on for closing remarks in the Ballroom at 4PM. Will Richardson, the godfather of educational blogging and the person everyone on a national level points to as a seminal voice in the educational Web 2.0 movement. Will Richardson delivered his thunder at 4PM before a couple of hundred people slowly dwindling as the hour went by as folks moved out to beat the 5PM traffic jams in Hartford. Henry Lee made snide remarks about tragic deaths in front of 3000.

I am sorry. Dr. Henry is a famous CT celebrity and has a national reputation in forensics. He does nothing that informs my practice, or gives me insight. He speaks with a thick accent that I find very hard to understand. He did attempt to be humorous in speaking about he cases he has been involved with. However, if I were the family of Vincent Foster or Shondra Levy I would have been disgusted to know that my relative’s tragic death was being used in a cavalier way in front of a audience of thousands. I tell you truly, I walked out. I know that there were many others who left upset with the graphic photos of the murder scenes. Henry Lee was the wrong choice.

Thank you Kathy for your grace in moving from the theory to practice and the sheer breadth of your knowledge. No matter when I hear you I cannot get over the font of resources you are. I hope to join you in Second Life on Thursday (Estaban Zenovka)
Thank you, Will for your impassioned clarity. You said in your blog a few weeks ago that you were wondering if it was all worth it. Please do not stop with your thunderous message. Judging from what I saw today, there are too many still living with their heads in the sand.

We must change. The world is changing around us. The kids are there, they are not waiting. The tools exist, they are free for the taking. When will CECA and the librarians in CEMA stop talking the talk and start walking the walk?

The clueless question of the day, after sitting through 35 minutes of a 45 minute presentation - “So, I am not sure I know where to find this Web 2.0. I don’t know how to connect to it. When I find it, will all these things you have talked about be listed on one page?”

Heaven help us…….