Monday was the first day of the conference, but the opening session wasn’t until nearly 1 p.m., so I wasn’t in a rush to get out of bed. I got dressed, collected my laptop and went down to the lobby have a delicious (and expensive!) buffet breakfast. This became the theme of the conference- fantastic breakfasts!
I logged in using the free wireless and got caught up on work and personal email. Once my co-workers were awake, we registered for the conference and picked up our goody bags. As a speaker, I was given a special “thank-you” gift: a mini speaker kit you can plug into your laptop. This will come in handy, but for some reason the other two folks I was presenting with had not been tagged as speakers, so they did not get a free gift- apparently only one person counts for the poster sessions.
I picked up a snack on the way to the opening speaker- Michael J. Bolger, the CIO of NASA. He talked about their current Information Technology Challenges: the restructuring and how they are improving security on their networks and consolidating resources. I knew most of it from when Drew worked for United Space Alliance (NASA’s largest contractor) but it was still interesting.
The first workshop I attended was about how Agnes Scott College is using iTunesU. I’ve heard about the service but never looked at it, so it was rather interesting. Next was a refreshment break (fresh fruit, bakery goodies, and caffeine of several sorts!) and then my second session fo the day on a Shakespeare class that used Wikis for student projects. It sort of made me wish that I had a regular class again, but since faculty are coming to me and asking about how to use these tools in their classrooms, it’s almost as good!
The third session was about the comparative study East Carolina University did of three course managements systems (obviously very interesting to me but boring if you’re not in that field, heh). This is one of the session that i think will be most useful back in my home department. The end of the day was a nice reception hosted by one of the vendors. There were finger foods and a free glass of wine. I met up with everyone from UCF who was attending and had a good time. I ended up giving a 20 minute overview of our support system to an interested IT person from another University- i felt like I was being grilled, but at the same time I was surprised at how much I actually know and can explain to others.
We were full after the reception, so I went for a walk along the waterfront with my roommate. All the bridges and downtown buildings were lit up and we explored a bit, finding Jacksonville Landing which is an open area of shops, restaurants and live music, and a path onto a bridge that put us next to the Jacksonville Maritime Museum (closed, unfortunately) and Friendship Park which has a huge fountain and light show. We tried to come back on the other side of the bridge and got a little lost. Luckily, some kind folks pointed us in the right direction and we were able to get back on the bridge. We caught up to them and it turns out they were attending the conference as well, so we all walked back together. While there were lots of walkways, they weren’t very well-marked or lighted. I later checked our route using Google GPS- we walked 2.5 miles in all! I took a shower and crawled into bed after calling Drew and wishing him a good night.
