[Ambassadors] EdTech Day follow-up

[Karlie Robinson]

Yesterday I attended the 19th annual Educational Technology [1] day at 
Ithaca College in Ithaca NY, USA.  As you may have guessed by the title, 
this show is focused on technologies used in k-12 as well as higher 
education. 

I was camped out in the Ithaca Free Software Association [2] booth for 
the day, so I must extend a hearty thank you to Eric and Marty for their 
booth hospitality.  I also need to thank Charles Profitt of the 
Rochester LUG/Ubuntu NY LoCo for giving me a ride to Ithaca (going green 
by way of the carpool).  And last but not least, Brian Neil for 
volunteering his time to jockey all 320 disc in and out of my printing 
and duplicating equipment. 

I met with a mix of Students, faculty and staff from numerous schools in 
upstate NY (Elmira College, Cornell, Syracuse, University of Rochester, 
K-12 from the area Etc).  I was also able to meet with community 
members.  In fact, the rush was more like a crush of people.  For 
example, we had 300 discs at 9am when the doors opened.  At 10:30 we 
handed out the last disc.  (I saved 20 sugar spins for my talk and I'm 
glad I did)

While it's my preferance to keep a notebook handy to record contact info 
for the people I meet with, this was darn near impossible.  Instead I 
relied upon my business card and the few I was able to collect.  As of 
this writing, I've made contact with those I had cards for and I've had 
one email come in. 

My presentation of OLPC - What if..? was well attended.  While I didn't 
get a head count, we made it to standing room only - so I would estimate 
40-ish. 

Immediately after my presentation I was again, mobbed with questions 
about Math4, OLPC and Fedora at the booth.  (good stuff eh?)

At about 2pm I was finally able to go visit the other booths and was 
stopped in the main hall by David Weil, the chair person for EdTech.  He 
thanked me for coming on short notice and offered OLPC/Fedora/Sugar Labs 
space for next year. 

One final note, I was able to promote POSSE a bit so I hope we'll be 
able to fill the bootcamp. 
Reply with questions. 

Notes at https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=User:Webpath/EdTech
Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/23277267@N03/sets/72157615986454834/

Karlie


[1] http://www.ithaca.edu/edtechday
[2] http://ithacafreesoftware.org/