Overall I think the conference was a success, but as part of the organising committee I am always conscious of what doesn't happen and looking to address this in future iterations of eFest. A few ideas along these lines:
- Remote speakers: disappointed with interaction during these sessions - feel we had it right with Peter Higgs on first day with structured breaks for questions through out the presentation. The EdTechTalk session also went very well with people using both microphone and text chat channels to ask Jeff and Dave questions throughout. Need to explore these issues more thoroughly for next year and then be more directive to remote presenters about how they structure their presentations.
- We under-utilised James Farmer - great energy and knowledge. Should have had him run at least one other workshop perhaps focussed on practical use of (edu)blogs OR on more advanced social networking topic for experienced elearning people. Definitely on the re-invitation list James :-).
- It's always difficult to get the balance right to cater for the range of participant experiences - beginner through to advanced, technical through to teacher, practitioner to manager, educator to policy maker. Would be great to get more managers involved.
- Definitely need to get better at supporting the conference online back-channel and potential for community building. Will look at how the Ako Aotearoa site may be able to support this once it's released in October. Also keen to open up eFest to remote participants, although need to work through the cost/revenue implications for this as it still costs significant $'s to host such a conference.
- Enjoyed my conversations with Paul, Dean and Danny from the Ministry of Education. I can see some great opportunities developing from these and was impressed with their receptiveness. It highlighted the lack of prescence from TEC who actually hold the $'s that could be used for establishing many of those shared services that were mentioned in a number of presentations.
- Overall there was too much "presentation" not enough conversation in the keynotes. Some great information but I missed the type of interaction we had during the FLINZ-led sessions we had on day 2 of eFest 2007.
I see some others have been sharing their thoughts on the conference or ideas/people they connected with - see the Google Search feed on the left of this blog. Although the organising commitee will be distributing a conference evaluation form shortly, it would be great to hear some feedback from anyone else who attended - or even those that didn't :-).
PS - George Siemens and Stephen Downes have posted copies of their presentations. More to come over the next few days.
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