DSC_0210, originally uploaded by david parmet.
Just because I like to know about these things…. I sat in on a session on Rails given by David Heinemeier Hansson, the Grand Pubah of Rails himself.
I’ve been looking for some good resources to get The Boy Genius started on programming - David recommended starting with Ruby, already installed on the Mac. And I found this site, perfect for The Boy’s sensibilities
I’m in the Keynotes now. Lot’s of power and wifi. O’Reilly FTW!.
For my upcoming session at BlogOrlando:
How is the Internet and Social Media changing education? From self-directed curriculum to opportunities for collaborative learning across global borders, the Internet has brought new options for learning to the classroom and beyond. Still there are concerns that the Internet is exposing school-aged children to a wider world they may not be ready for, and that it is denying children the opportunity for real hands-on learning, replacing real experiences with simulations. In addition, concerns about childhood obesity related to inactivity have been raised.
This session will not attempt to answer these questions, rather it will be a discussion about them. We will discuss what is going on in different districts and what individual school children are doing. We will compare our own experiences as parents, as educators and as learners.
Blog Orlando is a no-questions asked must attend for the social media marketing blogochatosphere. Josh never fails to put together a fantastic line up of interesting people and experts from every walk of life and profession.
This year’s BlogOrlando is scheduled for September 25 - 27.
This year, I’m doing something a bit different. I told Josh I’d love to talk but I felt the “Blogging Meets Marketing” meme was a bit tired, at least for me. It was time for me to let others speak on the subject. So this year I’ll be leading a discussion on how social media is impacting education. Given my interest and experience in the topic as a homeschooling parent, this is a topic I’ve wanted to explore for a while. So I’m looking forward to learning more myself as September approaches.
Yesterday morning, before my 10 hour dash through the wilds of Pennsylvania, I joined Benet Wilson of Aviation Week and Paula Berg of Southwest Airlines on a panel on new and social media at the ACI-NA Marketing and Communications Forum.
Benet, as I’ve noted previously, writes the Towers and Tarmacs blog. Paula shepherds the Nuts About Southwest blog. Attending were 250+ marketing managers for airports as well as folks from the airline industry, government and related industries.
I started off with my latest rant - that social media isn’t media and it isn’t technology. It’s what happens with the cost of global communication, publishing and mass organization drops to zero. it’s the cumulative impact of millions of people suddenly able to find others all over the world who share their point of view and the ability of those people to organize. I purposely tried to stay off of technology since this wasn’t a very tech-savvy crowd. From the reactions before, during and afterwards, it seems I made the right choice.
Paula told an interesting story about how the management of Southwest Airlines spends way too much time pondering the wisdom of their open seating policy. They finally decided to put the question to the blog’s readers. The overwhelmingly supportive response convinced them they are on the right track and they are (of course) happy they didn’t have to spend a fortune on some consultants to tell them that. And they are happy not being up all night wondering if they are making the right move.
The questions from the audience were all very well informed - people are definitely moving up te learning curve on social media. One woman asked us what she should tell her boss who is convinced that blogs and the Internet are the sole preserve of a small gang of edgelings (those kids and their Internet…). This is a vast improvement from the question I would get a few years ago… “isn’t blogging and the Internet just for tech geeks?”
All in all, it was a fun panel and we could have gone on for hours discussing the topic. That’s for another time.
Update: Pictures from the drive and the panel are here.
