[school-discuss] How was NECC 2006?

[Steve Hargadon]

On 7/10/06, Justin Riddiough <jriddiough at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve -
>
> How did the Open Source labs and sessions go at NECC?  Was anyone else
> from this discuss list able to attend?  It sounds like it would have
> been a very informative event covering many interesting subjects, wish
> I could have attended.

It was great.  If you go to flickr.com, search for "necc2006
opensourcelab" and you'll see the photos we took. Just search
"necc2006" or "necc" and you will see other photos as well.  Except
for one or two sessions, our lab area was almost always packed.  At
one point our email garden tables had lines two or three people
back--I think they were actually trying to see over the shoulders of
those on the computers, who were following along with the lab talks.
Our first speaker (David Thornburg) probably drew about 200 people (in
a lab setting of 25 computers).  Even our last session was
overfowing--which says a lot late Friday at a conference (it was our
third session on moodle).

There was a lot of buzz about Open Source at the show, and it helped
that we were right next to the "One Laptop per Child" booth, although
they didn't draw as many as we expected.  However, Negroponte's
keynote gave a significant boost to Open Source.

We do have a "wrapup" page at our http://necc2006.pbwiki.com wiki
site, so if you were at the show and have feedback for us, please
contribute.  The show organizers have said they want to put us in a
bigger space next year--let's hope they keep feeling that way!  All in
all, a wonderful experience, I think.

Steve


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Steve Hargadon
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