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Skipping the Big ConferencesI am not trying to start a boycott, but am making my own pointless statement about my fatigue with the format and limited outcomes of attending the large educational technology conferences. I’ve barked and moaned previously (see “I’m Bored As Hell And I’m Not Gonna… zzzzz”) about the staleness and sad irony of the 50 minute lecture to a passive audience being the primary mode of information sharing at professional gatherings and the minimal information density of conference presentations. This past year I attended both the mammoth EDUCAUSE 2004 conference (Denver, 6000? attendees) and the League for Innovation in the Community College’s Innovations 2005 conference (New York City, 3000+ attendees). Beyond meeting up between sessions with colleagues and doing fun stuff away from the site, I am hard pressed to list much as a take away. I get little out of listening to people read me their powerpoints, or spending 75% of their time giving background rather than starting with the demo. The agendas are so jam packed at the mega-cans that there is no room or time to breathe or decompress (the League conference lacked any seating in the hallways, now that is great design), just shuffle off numbly to the next lecture. And isn’t there irony that we travel thousands of miles, dumping travel dollars in hotels, and the conference centers are jammed full of folks reading email??? I watch folks in sessions, oblivious to the blabbering presenter, checking their email, fixing their websites, blogging about their boredom (oh wait a minute, that was me). Is this really sensible? Rational? or am I just suffering from a lack of oxygen? So for 2005-2006, I am passing on the big mega conferences. I’ll be at home, reading blogs, maybe listening to podcasts, but if I participate this year anything, I am search of the smaller sized meetings where there appears to be genuine exchange. Or an interesting format. I’m already committed to the August 7-10 SAC conference (~300 attendees) and a must-go for me every year is the New Media Consortium Summer Conference (300-400 attendees). I’ll keep my eyeballs out for other interesting regional events– I’d really like to go to the Open Education Conference at Utah State University, but the timing is not looking good with other events at home in Maricopa (and a planned get-away to Rocky Point in Mexico). I’ll be doing the April TCC Online conference and hope to coordinate timing with my colleagues in Australia for their online conferences. This happened to me before almost 10 years ago, pretty much pre-web, when I decided to forgo my conference travel money and used the funds to visit a number of colleges in the Pacific Northwest. I got much more in terms of ideas, contacts, from pretty much informal meetups set up with the technology du jour then (email listservs). So is it just me that thinks the big conference formats are as stale as that forgotten, unidentifiable vegetable rotting in the back of my fridge? Some fool has to call the conference king naked. For 2005-2006, I am not attending the big cons and looking for the medium to little cons, the online cons… And before any comments come raining in, I must admit that beyond my complaining, I do not have better ideas how to run a mega conference. The largest events I have been responsible for are in the 200-250 range, and I know it is a challenge to cook up an agenda that works for a good chunk of them. But I do know there is something better we can do with our time together than plenary + 20 simultaneous 50 minute lectures + plenary + …. I would use the collaborative tools of communication before, during, and after. I would follow the idea of hybrid/blended learning, and use the face to face time for what is best achieved in that format (dialogue, debate, exchange, social action) and use the technology to offline to movement of static content (papers and presentations). And people have to go with something of personal/professional value, not just t-shirts, goofy pens, and ugly conference tote bags. Is there any gathering out there that really pushes the conference format beyond a compressed series of lectures? Responses to “Skipping the Big Edu Cons”Yeah… It really hit me at NMC this year - There has to be a more effective/efficient way to share information than flying everyone half way around the globe to lock them in a room to talk. Then, of course, there are the GeekCruises… http://www.geekcruises.com/top/rr01_top.htm
THAT’s a conference format I like
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