My First Technology Conference

In July I was able to attend pod stock in Wichita. A conference hosted by ESSDACK, a consulting education company from Hutchinson, Kansas. I knew most of the names of the presenters that have met very few people there. I was excited to learn from these people but could never addict what happened next.

My friend Paul and I attended the Wednesday Pre-Conference workshop in which we able to test different apps, gadgets, etc and do a small EdCamp with the other attendees of the conference. Following the morning session there is a line at a table to meet the keynote speaker Todd Nesloney, his Twitter handle is @techninjatodd and on Google +Todd Nesloney . I had read several of his blog posts and followed him for a while on Twitter so I really wanted to get a chance to meet him.

One of the other presenters and coordinator of Podstock, +Ginger Lewman,recommended that we make sure that we include everybody and ask other people what they were doing for lunch. I took this to heart and as soon as I was able to talk to Todd we immediately asked if he wanted to join us for lunch. He was extremely grateful to have someone willing to go to lunch with him and show him around so didn't have to wonder around Downtown Wichita by himself.

We had a great lunch conversation and that started an awesome friendship between myself, Paul and Todd. The rest of the day we hung out with Todd and even attended his workshop on Flipping Like A Ninja.

My mind was buzzing that night and I was introduced to a lot of blogs to follow. One was +Pernille Ripp, Twitter @PernilleRipp, who coincidentally posted a great blog post that very night called, "I am Not a Rockstar, Please Don't Confuse Me With One" Now I am terrible about this but I put people on pedestals.  I always think, "Wow that person is amazing and I can never reach that." Here is a direct quote from her post.

"We are so quick to label people.  Within this weird PLN/social media/education world, we love labels even more as we spread them as tokens of our admiration and respect and yet they don’t fit for me.     “Rockstar.”  “The Best.”  “Incredible.”  We label people with more followers/more readers/more whatever it is…  I have even been called a few of these things, much to the amusement of my husband." 

Excerpt from Pernille Ripp, Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension

Now I understand that people like +Todd Nesloney, +Ginger Lewman, +Kevin Honeycutt, that each have thousands of followers on Twitter, are REGULAR Educators. REGULAR PEOPLE.  People like me that have struggles and insecurities and fail.  These amazing people need support and friends too.  So for an instant I could see things from Todd's perspective. He was in a foreign city, with only a few people that he barely knew, presenting to a bunch of people that adore him but don't see him as a real person.  That hit me pretty hard. So now I want to make sure that I try to say hello and have a conversation with as many people as I can.  From attendee to keynote speaker, everyone needs someone to talk to and everyone needs to eat!

And Todd's advice from Podstock echoes this, "Don't be afraid to meet new people and don't be afraid to reach out and ask people to go out to lunch with them"

I learned a lot from Podstock, the workshops were fantastic but the best thing I learned was to make connections, real connections with people.  So don't be afraid to ask questions and reach out to people. Especially on Twitter.  Educators that are on Twitter generally love to share info and meet new people.

During the conference where will to meet Felix Jacomino, who was hosting a conference in November called Miami Device. Todd was one of the presenters at Miami device and encouraged us to try and go because it was going to be full of amazing educators. Which we did get to go but that is another post!

Multiple Personality

So my life will be taking a drastic change in the new school year.  I will be moving to the Central Office of school district and be in charge of Technology in Staff Development.  This is a passion of mine, using technology to enhance the classroom. I am excited to get into learning new technology for education and making new connections with great educators.

In the short time that I have been in this role I have found many people are very kind to helping new people to educational technology. I will talk about my experience at Podstock 2014, a conference hosted by ESSDACK. I am also trying to get to Miami device an education technology conference with some amazing educators from around the United States. Also another blog post!