Today and tomorrow, I’ll be attending the Nebraska Educational Technology Association (NETA) conference. This year, I thought I’d blog about the conference… what I liked, what I wished would have been different, etc.

The most obvious first point is to talk about location, location, LOCATION. If you’re going to have a conference for thousands of people, make sure your venue doesn’t decide to start new construction in the one and only main parking lot. Parking was horrendous this morning.

The Keynote Speaker this morning is David Pogue… very charismatic, great sense of humor. His keynote address, “Five Technologies for the Next Five Years,” started as many tech keynotes do: a history of where we’ve been and then a projection of where we’re going in technology. Sure, it never fails to gather a few laughs when you go back and look at quotes stating that computers are a fad, or the “next new computer will ONLY weigh 1.5 tons.” I’m hoping, however, that we can get past this. Those of us in the technology field hear the same intro to the same keynotes at every conference. Pogue does a good job moving along to Web 2.0, and where we should be headed in that direction. I’m hoping that his next session will go a little more in-depth as to how we can productively use these “new” technologies in education.

Update: I really like Pogue’s presentation style. His effective use of humor keeps the audience engaged. Additionally, he is creative in his delivery, using his own lyrics set to well-known tunes to drive a point home. My personal favorites today were, “I Got YouTube” (“I Got You, Babe”) and “RIAA” (“YMCA”). I’m hoping he’ll post the lyrics on his blog. I’m going to his next session, and I hope it’s even better than the keynote.