HighEdWebDev 2007: That’s a wrap!

What a great conference!

This was the first time I managed to attend (and present at) HighEdWebDev in Rochester, and this was really time and money well spent.

• The organizers did a great job at planning and organizing the whole event (although a lapel microphone would have been a great addition for the “soft-spoken” presenters like me — not everybody can be a 6-foot guy with a big voice)
• As you’ve been able to see this year’s guest bloggers managed to post about most of the 13 sessions we scheduled to be blogged — even before the end of the conference — like real pros. Kudos to Martine, Dimitri, Jonathan and Seth!
  
  Dimitri, Jonathan, Julie – a reader – and Martine (Seth isn’t on the photo)
• The only presentation about SecondLife was given from SecondLife using a phone connection with the speaker based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I wish the presenter had included a small tour of the SL island on which the presentation was given, but this was definitely a bold move of the chair of this track to schedule this type of presentation (in a conference that isn’t specific to SL, that is).
• Mark Greenfield from UB explored a new frontier by picking a different style of presentation this year: a 6-minute intro supported by a timed slideshow and followed by 45 minutes of exchange with the audience. Very interesting concept and a big success as this presentation won the best of track.
• Susan Greene, webmaster at Housatonic Community College, presented a very interesting poster session (these are like a big school science fair, but for web folks — great concept by the way) to explain how she uses the course database to output at once the online catalog and the print catalog in Quark in 3 or 4 easy steps. Very, very, very smart and… cost-effective.
• Mike Dame from Virginia Tech gave his great keynote at lunch on October 16 (if you missed it, this presentation is available for purchase on-demand as part of Crisis Communication 2.0 Week, a 3-webinar series by Higher Ed Experts), exactly 6 months after the Virginia Tech Tragedy. I also attended a great panel discussion about the use of technology in crisis communications by Mark Lawrence (Cornell University), Mark Greenfield (University at Buffalo), Steve McConnell (UC Berkeley) and Chris Nixon (University of Arkansas).

Last but not least, I managed to meet with a lot of you. This was really fun to be able to put faces on names. I know that I also missed a few of the people I really wanted to see, but I’m sure there will be other occasions.