EDUCAUSE 2006 Annual Conference | EDUCAUSE 2006

Very useful conference for anyone involved in eLearning. 

Link to EDUCAUSE 2006 Annual Conference | EDUCAUSE 2006

It's big. Well, not as big as AAMC or some of the truly huge conventions...but still way bigger than what I'm used to.

Very efficiently organised. Some great speakers. Ray Kurzweil, as I just posted; Also Vint Cerf - father of the Internet. Many of the sessions were also excellent. Some sadly were along the lines of "weren't we clever to solve this problem we had...unfortunately, it is not generalisable to you..." - oh well, take the rough with the smooth.

Some useful new toys, software, educational systems etc. Continuing interest in Open Source material...although also some caveats about expectations. There was a great quote about it: "It's free...free like a puppy...no initial cost but expensive to maintain and needs lots of love to keep it happy".

Adobe have taken over Macromedia - it was very useful to get the lowdown on what will happen to the Macromedia product line. In short, it will all continue. (this was a requirement of regulatory compliance from the Monopolies Commission...hang on, what do they call it in the States...sorry, sleep deprived...can't remember...no, we were not partying...had to get up at 0345 for a flight home). Anyway, the Macromedia product line will all continue - even some of the older technology like Shockwave. There is a new version of Director coming out in the spring. Some products will be renamed to align with Adobe offerings eg Breeze Meeting will now become Adobe Connect; Breeze Presenter will become Adobe Presenter; stuff like that. Some nice new changes coming in the new upgrades due out this month.

Microsoft were showing what the new Office 2007 suite and associated servers can do. Much improved maintenance - a lot of improvements if you are a Microsoft shop, as we are. The collaboration and connectivity bits are much to the forefront. In fact, all vendors are incorporating this kinda stuff in their wares.

Smart Technologies, the SmartBoard people, had some nice new hardware to show. Apple is really pushing iPods, and iTunesU as an educational paradigm. Well integrated. Just not sure how comfortable I am with them making forays into academia with a proprietary format. See earlier posts from me and Jon Udell on this a few weeks back.

Datatel were talking a bit about their upcoming changes and how they will be using more of a SQL back-end, and SharePoint Portal Services to support their offerings. Moving away from their old style databases, which were very fast, but would not play well with others. Given the general shift towards web services, SOA, and interconnectivity, I think they have seen the writing on the wall. Time to chance direction...or run aground.

Lots of other stuff. Lots of attention to security and identity management - lots of competing offerings...which may not be a good thing with identity management because it would sure be nice if these systems would talk to each other.