TeachMeet@SLF2010: Reflection

It's now two weeks since TeachMeet@SLF 2010 but I wanted to do a quick post with a few thoughts and observations.

It was a slightly different experience for me this year since I was (at least nominally) in charge of the Flashmeeting. Can I start therefore by apologising for not being very good at my job. For a start, we were a bit late in starting the feed from the meeting, so people were hanging about a long time before we got up and running. Then, during the presentations, I kept forgetting to point the camera at the screen. Finally, rather than look after the Flashmeeting during the roundtable discussions, I abandoned the laptop at one table and went to a different one myself. Sorry folks.

In my defence, I abandoned the Flashmeeting during the roundtable because I was feeling a bit isolated; sitting at the table all on my ownsome instead of sitting at a table chatting with friends old and new. At least Ian noticed my predicament:

And to be fair, all though I was left all alone, Ian did bring me a drink!

Loads of interesting ideas (as usual) and some new innovations (largely thanks to David Noble I think). I liked the roundtable sessions and the World Cafe discussions as they both gave opportunities for interaction. I think it was good too that the number of presentations were limited so that everyone who signed up to do a presentation got the opportunity to do so. I remember how frustrated I was last year that my name wasn't picked and I didn't get a chance to do my bit. Names were still picked at random but just to decide the order of the presenters. (I was beginning to suspect conspiracy when we were reaching end of the evening and my name still hadn't come up; I was the second last speaker!)

All the people presenting were very good and it seems insidious to mention only one or two... but I'm going to do it anyway! I really enjoyed Jen Deyenberg's presentation on GPS and Geocaching. She delivered her spot at about 90mph and packed a ridiculous amount in to her seven minutes. Excellent stuff. She has posted something on her own blog about her talk and John has posted the audio too. The other presentation I thought was interesting was a two minute one from Sean Farrell talking about how to make Glow login easier for younger pupils. He has a screenshot of a proof-of-concept of how it might work. It reminded me a bit of the visual password system used by Vidoop (now owned by Confidant Technologies - not clear if it will remain free). I wonder how the Glow people or Local Authorities would react to using an OpenID system to login to Glow?

The World Cafe event I sat in on was on the future of TeachMeet... but I think I need another post to do justice to my thoughts about that topic!

Just a brief review here, but other people have already written about TeachMeet, for example, I like John Johnston's post and John has also been doing a fantastic job of posting audio from the event on the TMSLF2010 Posterous site.

P.S. Thanks to all involved in the organisation of this event - especially David Noble who took on the lion's share of the organisation.