Reflective Thoughts - My first NECC

This is the first of what I hope to be several posts following NECC.

NECC 2008 - Convene, Connect, Transform. I headed to this conference by myself, hoping to meet some of the people I've worked with, learned from, talked with, read about, and shared with over past six months or so. Some I felt I knew a little better than others due to more interaction via a project we collaborated on, or through Twitter, Skype, or Blogging. Overall, however, my prior interaction with most was very minimal. I wish I would have attended EduBloggerCon to see what it was all about and after looking back, I probably could have made it for the afternoon. My flight arrived around 11:00 on Saturday and rather than head straight to a relative's house where I was staying, I could have stopped by for the experience. Hopefully it will work out next year if I attend NECC 2009 in D.C.

I wrote earlier about my thoughts sitting in the Bloggers' Cafe for the first time and how it compared to a classroom, but wanted to add that this was a very important place for me during NECC. I think I would have spent a lot of time wandering around if this place didn't exist. The Bloggers' Cafe was a place where people like me could take a break, have a conversation, or simply catch up. I didn't really blog that much although I did do quite a bit of reading (or deleting). This was also a place I met some people who collaborated on a project with me earlier this year. While I did have some email and Skype contact already, it was really nice to meet Laura Deisley, Robin Ellis, Howard Martin, and Teryl Magee face to face. These were great people and I ended up hanging with Teryl and Howard a little more as the conference went on. As the conference progressed, I met Martha Thornsburgh when I unknowingly sat next to her at a session. We chatted about the project we worked on together briefly and I'm happy to say they would participate again in the future.

I'm not usually the type of person who will go up to someone and introduce myself out of the blude so doing this wasn't easy for me, especially the first day. However, as the conference when on, I figured, what the heck. I was able to meet and have a few conversations with some of the people I follow, which was nice. Some people, like Scott Meech, came up to me, which was exciting. I had an interesting conversation with Laurie V. about walking up to the "big names" and whether or not that was appropriate or even if they cared. I mentioned a blog I had read about Elite-ism (by Darren Draper I think), which I feel is very much related to this topic. Are there "big names" and then the rest of us? This seems to have been a much discussed topic over the last week or so. The more I think about this, however, I think maybe it comes down to the role each of us has in education. Everyone I talked to was very nice, some more talkative than others, but I may have caught them at a bad time. What I mean by role, is simply their job. I'm a K-5 library media specialist. Others were teachers, tech integration specialists, district technology directors and so on. Perhaps people have an easier time talking to others who have similar interests/experiences/problems. When I look back, some the people I think are "big names" are people with educational technology positions I hope to have some day. They have been doing this much longer than I have and have more experience and knowledge in the field. Maybe that's why I think I'm not quite up to their level. Laurie and I both weren't sure what was the best way to handle these introductions, but we both did end up meeting great people. There were some tweets during NECC about this topic, some even mentioning that telling someone you "follow them on Twitter" was a faux pas. I don't agree with this at all. There's nothing wrong with walking up to someone and telling them you follow them. Like she mentioned, if you don't want this, don't put yourself out there. If they don't care, they will give you a brief response and the conversation will be over. When I introduced myself, I tried to say something like "I've enjoyed learning from you" or "I've enjoyed reading some of your stuff." I'm sure I mentioned Twitter at some point as well. Perhaps wording it like that reduces the stalker effect.

As far as meeting people, I was really shocked when the same thing happened in similar situations. One took place on an escalator and one took place in a session. I was positioned next to someone else and when they looked at my name tag, said, "Your Chad Lehman, Jen Wagner (who I met in Spring at WEMTA) told me I should say hi if I saw you" (or something similar). Wow, the power of Jen! Of the hundreds of people Jen knew at NECC, it was humbling to have her mention my name to some of her friends and have them try and meet me. In fact, in one of the situations, the other person and I were in the back channel of the session and Jen was participating as well.

I have more thoughts about NECC that I'll eventually get to. Please feel free to share your thoughts about about Connecting.