it sure aint ALT

Hot diggety damn, Louise has got here before me this year…

Overall, the conference felt a little (or liddle if your name is Brian) bit flat this year – the location didn’t help, as usually everyone is congregated in a small area and there are loads of opportunities to network Dallas is a kind of spread out place and not exactly conducive to wandering around…

Educause covers everything from e-learning, to libraries, to hard core technology, to strategic management. This year the big issue was security and this tended to allow the techies to dominate what was going on. Some things had mysteriously disappeared, such as content management systems and repositories, but as Louise mentioned, if I had a fiver for every time Google was mentioned I would be a rich man. There was a lot of stuff about strategy and assessing the impact of IT and e-learning, and clearly, everyone’s budgets are under pressure - in this respect I thought we are doing OK.

The open source debate about Sakai and Moodle, feels like a phoney war – no-one is convinced that the TCO (total cost of ownership) of open source is significantly lower than commercial software. Sorry, I will rephrase that, no-one who has the cheque book thinks open source is a good idea. The pro open source people sound just like the anti Microsoft brigade of yore, and just as deluded.

I feel, after listening to people, that SHU is still in the vanguard of e-learning, but that perhaps we need to push a few more things to completion – eg really really go for it with the Student Portal, and maybe take a few more risks, eg on mobile technologies, or the gaming stuff.

Good things

• The LTI, as currently configured, is the envy of pretty much everyone I met. People are still struggling with things we solved years ago, and are simply not set up to meet the challenges of the future the way we are – phrases such as Academic Innovation, Creative Development, Educational Change, Research Informed Teaching - all had the Americans feeling suitably chastised.
• Educause wont be in Dallas again for a while
• We spent a lot of time with Presidium and have been able to have honest discussions with them about teething problems as we go live
• I feel we have a foothold in Educause, and maybe more importantly, ELI
• I managed to walk in to Louise and Liz’s hotel accompanied by Bryan Alexander
• Lending my power supply to Bryan Alexander, and having him go off on a riff about transatlantic power sharing – elect this man President now!
• I found out what a mash up is, not sure if this isnt a bit dubious though... http://paul.kedrosky.com/publicloos/
• Ray Kurzweil

Things that could be good or bad

• Mark Lee’s toy (convertible) car, like being on the dodgems but faster
• A distinct absence of non-US delegates – less income for the bars, less chance to show off
• My friends in Chicago really (and I mean really really) being into international talk like a pirate day
• I kinda miss coming home to the blueberries
• Doesn’t look like Carl O’Keefe had any travel problems
• Mojitas – erm, drinking a drink full of mint, hotel shampoo fragranced with rosemary, erm, where’s the lamb???

Bad things

• How on earth did we end up here twice?? http://cityguide.aol.com/dallas/bars/ghostbar/v-304782
• watching Ray Kurzweil whilst sat in a pool of chocolate milk
• the endless chirruping, clicking, etc of PDAs throughout every session
• not really connecting with Diana Oblinger
• Now that a lot of WebCT folk work for Blackboard, I was asked twice if I was Adrian Powell from University of Sheffield, hum, and double hum…..
• some awful strategic bull****, Mr CITI Worsley should relocate instantly and sort these people out
• even my homeless chums couldn’t convince the owner of the Main St Café to serve me breakfast, and when I learn how to do mash ups, you’re finished mate, and I mean finished!