2008+Closing+Comments

Closing Comments
Mike H: So, Saturday is not a bad idea? ?: Suggestion: way to keep communication up?
 * Mike Huffman:** Held conference two weeks early this year, hoping that it allowed the use of 2008 dollars. Did anyone do this? Nobody today raised their hands. When would you like to have this conference in the future?
 * Kevin McGuire:** It has to be later or in the springtime.
 * Forest G:** Saturday's bad.
 * Kevin M:** Is springtime a better time?
 * ?:** Came from Battle Creek MI. Would be better later in order to get school year started and ready. Brought a school teacher and would want to bring more next year, so needs to be early in the year.
 * ?:** Need to consider that NECC is in June, so don't want to conflict with that.
 * ?:** As a teacher, easier to not have to get subs for each day, liked Saturday.
 * ?**: As a teacher, Friday/Saturday is a better combination. More teachers on Friday Saturday.
 * Mike**: We tried the Saturday this year and didn't know.
 * David Thornburg**: CUE. Conference starts on Thursday with administrator. Friday/Saturday for everybody, so teachers only need to get sub for one day. Also, in Palm Springs, so that is attractive for the weekend..
 * David Trask**: Some states have a common development day.
 * Mike H**: Is there any group that puts those together nationwide.
 * David Thornburg**: CUE gets you college credit.
 * Mike H**: This is something we ought to explore. Next question: length. On Thursday we invited special people to the roadmap session, to develop a roadmap so that schools can deploy Linux and put it in place. One of the real difficulties is: Gee, this makes a lot of sense to put in my school, but there is not a good source for roadmap material. Sure, examples of people doing it, but nothing general that says here are the guidelines. The concept of the roadmap is to come up with a checklist. You are going to see a document come out of this conference with checklists and recommendations. We hope this becomes an important document for schools--US and around the world. Yesterday all day of sessions, today half day of sessions. Would you like Saturday for a full day?
 * General**: No! Has the be half-day.
 * ?:** Another issue: Would have been nice to have a place to put material before the conference.
 * Mike**: we did this last year, but only one or two put them up. One of the things that makes this conference great is that there were changes being made the night before.
 * David Trask**: live and recorded keynotes?
 * ?**: What were school visits like? Worthwhile? (Good comments yesterday)
 * Benoit**: For those who don't know the 1:1 environment, it was very, very important.
 * Spence**: We see the presentations about kids being successful, but being there real-time to see how the technology was integrated and how the kids were not in computer time but learning, that was great.
 * Mike**: Going to these schools really charges the batteries, seeing the kids interacting in this way.
 * Paul Nelson**: Have a playground that is staffed by students and having them show applications. You can get vendors to set up lab.
 * Mike**: Last year had vendor re-create entire class, and had teacher actually conduct his classes here at the conference.
 * Norma**: Some of the session were great, but they were not teacher friendly. Would be good to have more pedagogical. So many IT people she met.
 * Mike**: We attempted to define sessions as technical, teaching and learning, and leadership.
 * Norma:** Panel of teachers? Keynotes were wonderful since they weren't addressing technical.
 * Mike:** Panel of teacher would be great.
 * Leslie:** Vendor bring in a table of laptops so that teachers can play with them.
 * ?:** Bring your own laptop sessions. Workshops.
 * Mike:** recently I got a great deal on a cassette tape player with USB jack. He's now converting all of his cassette tapes to MP3s. Also bought a turntable. Finally I will hear Dean Martin again. Both products came with Audacity. Called it something else, but said they were shipping all the software you needed to do this.
 * David Trask:** One room where there is lab set up for hands-on sessions.
 * Mike**: One of the things we face is that we have tech people who register 3 days before the conference.
 * Laura**: Or the morning thereof....
 * Mike**: As you know the food and conference rooms... planning purposes it's really hard when you don't register early. We are hoping to announce time and date within the next month.
 * Donna**: Early-bird rate to get people to register early, helps with budgeting and planning. Have to practice what we preach. Make much more interactive sessions the norm.
 * Mike**: We had an early-bird rate, but it didn't work too well since the website got up so late.
 * ?:** Try to have instructions in advance for certain sessions so that people can download. Also gives you an idea of popularity.
 * Mike**: We do something like that with HECT (?) conference.
 * ?:** A couple of wikipages on who wants to share room, share ride, etc. I didn't have any way to connect (social network for conference).
 * Paul Nelson**: The facilities were great, the food was great.
 * Kevin Mc**: Downtown was MUCH better.
 * Laura**: Hotel did a great job.
 * Mike**: Probably will be here next year, but then will start moving around if there is the interest... This is not a show, but designed to be a working space. Someone read sign slightly wrong: opening minds. The kids are the ones that really benefit from these efforts. Thank you all for being here
 * Steve**: NECC, CUE, and T+L Conference--submit applications to speak there and spread the conferences.
 * David Trask**: NELS conference, invite you to come and really spend some time learning how to do specific skills--blogging, Moodle, building servers, etc. Been doing this for 8 years, would love to have you out. Hoping to replicate smaller one-day conferences around the US doing this.
 * Steve**: k12openminds.com wiki has link to email group.
 * Randy Orwin**: NCCE - Nortwest council conference, 2300 people, will have open source pavilion.
 * Donna**: Australian Computers in Education Conference. 2010. Committee is very interested in having the conference be more open to international participation. We need more open sessions, and would encourage you to submit to this. 2 - 5k.
 * Simon**: Ohio Linux fest, coming up soon.
 * Knut**: Conference has matured a lot, program is more intersting, and I think you have something you can share by bringing education track to Open Source conference.
 * Mike**: To have in place a cloud that connects the different nations. We're going to try to work on this. We will have the foundation piece of a network that can grow to help all nations. 2012 in Indianapolis: The Super Bowl.