I’m sitting in the airport in Vancouver (and later on the plane coming home) and wanted to capture some of the thoughts I have about how the keynote went. I’m absolutely exhausted, so I’m not sure how coherent this is going to be, but it’s important to get this down before it’s glossed over and starts to fade away.
Some context - this was my first keynote as presenter (well, co-presenter), so I was a bit intimidated by that. I’ve been part of (and have given) presentations to very large groups, but never as Keynote Presenter™. Our ideas about what the keynote should be about all revolved around topics involving individual autonomy and control of content and learning, of ownership, and of thinking critically about the nature of relationships between students and teachers, as well as with institutions. Education vs. learning. Individual vs. institutional. Some potentially radical and non-traditional keynote topics, which would be completely unsuited to a conventional powerpoint chalk-and-talk presentation.
I’m sitting in the hotel lobby with Brian and Stephen, putting some thought into wtf we’re going to try during our keynote. One idea Stephen had was to have an open web-based chat room, so attendees (physical or virtual) could ask questions, make comments, etc… without the intimidation of grabbing the microphone.
After a quick Google, and a few false starts, I found a link to Lace - it’s a simple PHP + “Ajax” chat server, using flat files to store session and chat data. That means it can run anywhere PHP can run, without needing a database.
I checked the registration for the session tomorrow - it’s up to 50 people. We’ll have to open the extra wings in the Big Room, but there will be lots of room for all.
I just tested the visualizer to make sure it showed my old 3G iPod clearly, and it looked like a Stevenote circa 2004 - I should pick up a black angora turtleneck. :-) Should be fun. I’ve grabbed a copy of the Creative Commons Senate Content Pack, and have a bunch of mixed podcasts preloaded for demonstration.
The playoffs start on Friday, with Calgary in first place in the North West division.
If you’ve got a spare ticket or two (or have some extra room in your Superbox) and want to support your friendly neighborhood edublogger, give me a shout. I’m willing to trade for some space on this award winning edublog :-)
Stephen Downes is hosting a keynote at BCEdOnline 2006 (Thursday April 20, 2:45-3:45pm) and was gracious enough to invite Brian and myself to take a ride on his coattails to join him on stage for the keynote. I’m going to fly into Vancouver just for the day (and will try to be as awake as possible during the keynote).
We’re planning to do something rather less conventional. Not quite an “un-keynote” - but more of a discussion or fireside chat, directed by the audience. It’d be pretty presumptuous not to tap into the audience for an event like this, so an open discussion-slash-Q&A session seemed more fitting. Likely not quite to the level of managed chaos that we were able to achieve for the Social Software Salon, perhaps more akin to the Edublogger Hootenanny.
My bike has been collecting dust in the garage for almost 2 years. I used to ride all the time - even commuting to the University back when I worked in the Faculty of Nursing. But, I’ve been succesfully avoiding riding it (or doing any other real physical activity, really) for far too long. 2 days of Easter-related binge eating pushed me over the edge, so I pumped up the tires and went for a ride around the community.
I just updated the TLC’s copy of Drupal, used to host 10 Drupal-powered websites, to the latest Drupal 4.7 RC3 build. Upgrading the code took under 2 minutes (SSH into the server, curl the updated code down onto the server, then tar -xzf and move the appropriate files into place). Add another 5 minutes to run the update.php script on each site, and you’ve got 10 Drupal sites updated in 7 minutes flat.
Just testing out the latest build of the Performancing for Firefox extension - a fully-featured weblog manager built into Firefox. And it’s free.
I had to stop using it a while back because it was behaving oddly (character spacing in the text editor was wonky enough to make it unusable) but it’s behaving perfectly now. Not sure if it was the latest Firefox update, or a rogue extension, but whatever was causing the misbehaviour, it’s all good now.
I played with the new Google Calendar yesterday (great timing - we had just finished a meeting at the TLC where we were throwing ideas around to improve our timesheet and project tracking systems, and a calendar UI was high on the list).
At first, I thought it was just a web based iCal knockoff. But, I just played a bit more, and now I realize it’s a web based Newton Calendar knockoff. That’s meant as a very high compliment. Maybe, 10 years later, we’re ready to get back into data soups and intelligent assistants…
Peregrine falcons have been nesting on a ledge high on the exterior of the Library Tower at the University of Calgary for almost a decade. They’ve returned each year, but failed to nest in 2004 and 2005. As I was heading for the bus with Evan after work yesterday, we heard one of the falcons screeching from a nearby poplar tree. Evan hadn’t heard a bird that sounded like that before, so we got to have a nice talk about falcons while walking to the bus stop.
