Stephen's Untold Stories

I made a special Bubbleshare album of just the photos from the Zoo.

I created a Bubbleshare photo album of my San Diego Photos. Enjoy!

Thanks to Mark Wagner for taking this photo of me during my presentation at NECC.I’m the goofy-looking guy in the blue shirt.

And thanks to Jerrie for letting me know about this!

I didn’t get to blog as much at NECC as I had hoped, but not having a laptop will do that to you. My gadgets served me well for checking E-Mail and such, but they aren’t ideal for blogging.

Overall, it was a great conference. There was a wide variety of topics and technology to be found, so it should have been easy to find something for everyone.

San Diego was a great location, but I heard some people say that the date wasn’t a good one. Of course it was the week of July 4th, but several people told me that they were either getting ready for or getting ready to close out summer school. Next year’s conference in Atlanta will be in late June, so maybe it will work better for more people.

If you want to read what the great bloggers were saying, please check them out here and also here. I was very glad to attend and I was honored that so many people came to my presentation.

Well, I did a trolley tour of San Diego this morning and spent a couple of hours at the Zoo. I wish I had more time, but I can safely say it is the best zoo I’ve ever seen. I took lots of pictures that I’ll post later.

Getting back to the conference, I attended a great sesssion by Richard Kassissieh entitled “Zero to 60 in Three Years: A New Online Community.” He spoke about the issues and challenges of setting up school intranets and showed us the evolution of his work in this area. He is a great presenter and I would highly recommend adding his blog to your daily reading.

Downtown San Diego

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I did my final session this morning, and I was overwhelmed by the number of people who stopped by. I stopped even trying to count when it got over 70 total. I ran out of cards, but you can download my presentation here if you like.

I would like to thank everyone who did stop by. I had a blast!

Here is another photo from the balcony of my hotel.

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I got  into San Diego around 10:00 am local time, and I will start by saying that it is an incredibly beautiful city. My hotel is right downtown, and I have a great view from my balcony.

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I did have my session this evening from 7:00 – 9:00 pm, and I was happy that a lot of people came by and asked about RSS. I’m guessing maybe 30-40 people stopped by, which is not bad considering that the official start of the conference isn’t until tomorrow.

We had a great fireworks display over the harbor, and I’m very excited about the rest of the conference. I present again tomorrow at 10:00 am, and I am very excited.

I find myself in a strange situation. I’m between jobs, and I don’t have a laptop. I don’t want to buy one right now just to present at NECC, so a former colleague who will also be attending has agreed let me borrow his during my presentations. The rest of the conference I will have to fend for myself by using E-Mail/Kiosk stations and my five mobile devices. Here they are:

My Sprint PPC-6700. Has EVDO wireless Internet so I don’t have to rely on having WiFi. It does allow for WiFi if present, and the slide out keyboard works really well. The majority of blogging I do at NECC will likely be done with this device.

My Palm TX. A great device. It has WiFi, so I will use it for browsing and E-Mail. The graffiti text entry is not something that I enjoy, so I do very little typing with it. The Blazer web browser works great for most sites, so I will get a lot of use out of this.

My old friend, the Dell Axim. It has WiFi, but I will likely just use it as a backup to the TX. It’s battery life is very limited, but it has always been a reliable device.

My XM radio. I usually listen to this in the car, but it will be with me at the conference. I can listen to Major Leage Baseball games with it, and it has lots of great music channels.

I also have a photo iPod, but no pic for that. Hopefully these gadgets will get me through the conference.

Check this out!

Blogger meet up at NECC

I was very happy to see my buddy Herman Wood on the list of attendees who will be blogging the conference. I had intended to sign up for that, but I forgot! Ugh!

In any event, I do plan on doing a good bit of blogging at the conference. This will be my first time at NECC, and I want to make sure it is a memorable one.

NECC will come to Atlanta in 2007, so I will at least get to attend, if not present again.

Oh well, back to work on my presentation, which I’ll be doing on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning!

David Warlick has put together a sort “NECC aggregator” called Hitchhikr.

In changing times, we need to raise our heads out of the water every once in a while, take a drink of kool-aid, network, learn, and energize. Yet, we can’t always make it to the conferences we need to attend to mix with the people we need to see — face-to-face. This is why Hitchhikr was invented, to provide you with a virtual space where, thanks to blogs, podcasts, and RSS, we can connect, share, respond, and grow knowledge out beyond the place and time of the event.

As always, David has done a great job!