Back from Educause

I’m back from Educause and I would say that the trip was an overall success. This conference was different from the Microsoft TechEd conferences I usually attend. It gives me a higher level view of some of the technologies and policy making that goes into IT. At Tech Ed you are watching guys write code about 75% of the time. Both have their advantages but it was good to see how the other 1/2 lives for a while.



My presentation went pretty well. I would estimate that about 75 people pulled themselves out of bed for the 8:10 showing of “Conecting Your Campus with SMS”. I got a lot of questions and several people asked me about collaborating on this topic in the future. I even made somebody’s blog but I believe it’s in Dutch so I don’t know exactly what they were saying.



http://edutrip2006.blogspot.com/2006/10/connecting-your-campus-with-sms.html



After the conference I drove down to San Antonio and got to see my family for about 40 hours. Even though it was a short amount of time it was great to see everybody. I then spent about 30 hours in airports and planes getting back to Doha. I’m still recovering from jet lag. For some reason it hit me pretty hard this time around.



One of the more surprising events of my trip was when I got back. I don’t know if it was me being gone for a week but Emma looks noticeably bigger. She may be just sitting up straighter but I couldn’t get over the fact of how big she looks. I was only gone a week but something happened.



Facebook



So I’ve given in to the social networking experiment and have signed up on facebook. Only 14 people from my high school have signed up but I actually knew most of them. I guess it takes a certain “type”. It is interesting to see what people are up to and is kind of like a high school reunion without all the annoying small talk.



The Texas Governor’s Race



If you didn’t see the debate you can see it at:



http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/VideoPlayer/videoPlayer.php?vidId=93181&catId=104