Birds of a Feather at NECC2006, San Diego!!!

Yep, this un's been been busy with the two podcasts and teaching my 20 classes a week, but never fear, ya'll: There's good news to share and I'm here to share it!

I received yesterday the email from NECC2006 confirming the acceptance of my "Birds of a Feather" ("Birds-of-a-Feather sessions are a special opportunity for like-minded educators to gather and network. They are one-hour in length, and approximately 30 Birds-of-a-Feather sessions will take place each evening on Wednesday and Thursday.") session proposal's acceptance. I reprint it here in part:

Dear Scott,

The NECC 2006 Program Committee has completed its review of this year's
proposal submissions, and we are pleased to announce that you have been
accepted to present at NECC. Please find the status of your BIRDS OF A
FEATHER discussion topic below:

Title: Searching for Mr. Goodware:
Status: ACCEPTED

Rooms will be posted online in mid May. Birds scheduled in the Sail
Pavillion are roundtable format; all others are scheduled in session rooms.
Those scheduled in a session room may use the equipment however no technical
support will be provided.

Sincerely,

NECC Program Staff

Woo-weeeeee! Validation from the International Society for Technology in Education that there is a need and an interest in desktop IVC tools for educators! Now I'll be working to bring in remote attendees from various hardware and software providers all over the country (world?) to give fellow birdsies, briefly, the reason(s) why their solution is preferable to others. Here's the 25 words or less (required--I kid you not) description of the session--

Polycom PVX, iVisit, SightSpeed, YahooMessenger!, AIM, IChat, MSMessenger, Skpe, GoogleTalk, yadayadayada, ya'll. What works the best and why aren't we all using it?

The session is scheduled forWednesday, 7/5/2006, Time: 5:15pm– 6:15pm and as the message states its location is to be determined.

Now, the description for BOF (interesting acronym, eh?) sessions tells me that "no computers or Internet connections will be provided." That's a bit disheartening, but I do have a nifty laptop and I know from experience that NECC session rooms are robustly wireless, so I plan to proceed with my skeletal plan to, yes, hold a discussion of the various options and how people are using them in education; but also to provide direct info from providers of hardware and software. It's just the right thing to do! Most interestingly, we'll be sharing experiences from the PC and the Apple perspectives--my friend Joan Roehre will be co-presenting and will represent the MacHeads of our profession. Want to play?

I hope if you're an educator planning to attend NECC2006 in San Diego that you'll pencil in the date and time and come join us. And check back here occasionally to see if I have made any progress making productive contact with the commercial world...

Cheers from springtime Nashville!
Scott