New Media Consortium Summer 2008 Feedback
From ETS
Contents |
General Thoughts
- Backchannel was not promoted during the conference. There's some information on the website, but it helps a lot if it's more centrally incorporated into the conference - for example, reminders during "house cleaning" announcements. Maybe a wiki where people can share Twitter names? [1]
- I thought was a good conference as always. It seemed like we were in a "reflective" year contemplating already-known technologies like Second Life, Google Maps, Digital Storytelling, video. I think iPhone might pick up more next year.
- This was my first year. It seemed like there were a lot more people than they had planned for. It took longer to move everyone around and especially to feed everyone than they had allowed for. If your session right before lunch ran long you had to choose between attending the lunchtime speaker or eating lunch. I also thought a lot of the sessions were mis-labeled.
- This was also my first NMC and overall I found it to be a valuable experience. The focus of the conference is directly applicable to what we do in the Digital Commons and so it was good to hear about how other campuses have overcome some of the same challenges that we run into.
- This was my first NMC conference. It was 75% of what I expected, which still made it better than any other conference I've been to so far. (Maybe I don't get out enough). I was surprised at the lack of a back channel during the conference. My expectation was that this would be a major component of the event. However, the theme of the conference, Digital Storytelling, and the amount of discussion around images becoming the primary language of young learners was spot on. I saw a couple of good presentations on how instructors are adopting to this new way of communicating.
- A good preconf session next year would be on all the social tools used for backchannels - Twitter, etc. That way attendees could use these skills during the conference proper.
Environment
- Hotel
- Nice but far from campus. It's tricky to find the right accommodation, but I really felt like I was detached from the campus on this round (partly because of construction). I almost wished we had held everything at the hotel.
- Plus the pool was only open one night out of four :-(
- I wish the other Hyatt would have been the main hotel. It was about the same distance from campus, but there were many more things around the hotel if you wanted to grab a bite to eat.
- The hotel was overpriced and removed from the event and the town. The conference planners did a nice job of trying to incorporate the hotel into things by holding events there.
- The evening events just did not seem up to par with previous years. I found it difficult to talk to anyone in the hall itself; ended up going out into the lobby for conversation.
- Campus
- Wow they have construction at Princeton in the summer just like PSU! It's unfortunate that we had to wind our way through the stadium to get to the right building (although it's an architecturally innovative stadium). Driving through town, I did get a sense that the rest of campus was lovely, but I didn't have enough time to visit.
- The walking tour was nice. The campus has a lot more character that UP.
- The campus was gorgeous. An ideal place to hold an event. The only drawback was the construction that made the walk from the shuttle bus to the conference a bit long but, livable.
- Session Rooms
- Cramped, several sessions had to turn away interested people
- I actually felt the rooms were fine for what they were (on-campus classrooms). The trick, as always, is judging attendance. The lunch set up in the hallway was particularly odd though.
- The chairs were very uncomfortable!
- Some were very small and could not fit everyone who was trying to get in, then your next session would be in a room which seats 100 and there would be 13 people attending.
- Depending on the session the room worked on did not. One of the bummers was the cramped quarters for any hands on session. Seats were cramped together in order to accommodate the attendees; the equipment obstructed your view and made it difficult to do things as a group.
- I feel sorry for students that have to sit in those chairs day after day...
Presentations
- I think I had better luck than some people. I focused on presentations of actual course projects and those seemed to feature a wide set of tools. The two hands-on sessions I attended were very rushed, but I still learned a lot. FYI...I think some people need to think of more "catchy titles" (e.g. "games" instead of "decision making").
- There seemed to be confusion between the presenters and the "set up committee." One "hands-on" session was lecture because the speaker said he didn't know it was to be hands-on. The Adobe Connect/Captivate session didn't include Captivate because the presenter said the room wasn't set up for Captivate. Many of the sessions I attended were interesting, but were about proprietary applications to which I don't have access.
- The sessions were hit and miss for me. My hands on session with the Apple trainers was great, as was a presentation by faculty at Duke University who discussed some of the next steps after you have made new media available to the students. Other sessions, however, consisted of the presenter reading information off of a website.
- I found the presentations to be hit or miss. I attended several that were very good including a preconference workshop on teaching with images, a session on digital storytelling, and another on integrating the backchannel into the classroom. But I also ran across some duds. Either the abstract was totally misleading (promises to talk about the experience of teaching with rich media but actually doing a product demo) or the presentations themselves were very poor. For a conference based on the premise of "new media" there was a lot of horrible powerpoint going on.
- Some session names and descriptions did not match the actual presentation at all. I would like to see more effort on audience participation where appropriate. What about different lengths for presentations? - some could be 45 minutes, others 90.
General Sessions
- I liked the nanotech presentation. Lots of new things, plus the speaker was good at demystifying the science. I thought the Sports Illustrated presentation had lots of moving images, but I wanted a little more information about the process. I was impressed that he stopped because he ran out of time.
Five Minutes of Fame
- Good variety of presentations. A little too short for some. It took a few minutes to figure out what they were really talking about -- by the time I figured it out, their time was up!
- Very fun, engaging, and informative. I wish we could do something like this for the symposium but we do not have the audience for it. Perhaps at our ID retreat this summer? Hmmm, I think we may have the folks with the right temperament there.
Diana Oblinger Keynote
- A quick summary of everything I have heard in the past 5 years. I was intrigued by the notion of including the "citizen scientist" (non-academics contributing content in areas they are interested in). I think this is an aspect of sites like Wikipedia which we don't always understand.
- Good lead-in to my presentation!
- The presentation itself was good. However, it did not contain much that was new or insightful. The most intriguing part was the discussion on the community contributing the the knowledge base of the whole, citing Wikipedia and scientific data collections. Sir Francis Galton was right, even if it was much to his dismay, there is wisdom in crowds.
Henry Jenkins Plenary
- This was the second time I got to hear Henry Jenkins speak. I found him to be much more provocative at our symposium three years ago. I got the sense that he was going through the motions a bit at this point. Even his introduction sounded as if he was doing this as a favor.
- Jenkins always spins a good tale. However, he has spoken at this event too many time in the past several years. Time to find other people.
