Adventures in Philly
I’m currently writing this while sitting in a plane parked on the tarmac at Philidelphia Airport. My flight home from the eduWeb Conference 2008 was supposed to leave at 6:30pm EST. It is currently 8:50 EST. Mine was one of many flights that were either delayed or simply canceled coming out of Philadelphia. The primary reason for the delay is weather. It is storming here in Philly, has been for about an hour and is apparently supposed to be for the next 8 hours. No word from the captain on whether or not we will be leaving soon, or even at all. I just wish that they had pulled back up to the terminal so that we could at least spread out in the airport. Eat food. They have served first class their food (dinner entrees with wine), but have yet to come and offer anything to those of us in the cheap seats. I guess that’s what you get for not being rich…haha. Just kidding. As I look behind me, I think I see the flight attendants serving drinks to the passengers behind, so that is a good sign. At this point, this is just another random step in this trip.
Overall, I’m very, very pleased with my experience at the conference. It was my first conference where my primary focus was meeting with other people in the higher education industry that share my job. I went to a conference in April, but that was more to learn to use a product that we had purchased (Banner). While this conference offered some great insights into how students use social networks when researching and choosing colleges, I think my take-away will be the people I have met and the relationships I have started to build.
Most of all, this conference has encouraged me to start blogging again. And to take it seriously. Not to just post about whatever’s going on, but to really think about what I’m writing. I guess part of what I’m feeling is that I’m actually starting to finally feel like an adult. To take stock of where I am professionally and start to plan where I’d like to be at a point in the future.
I hope that if I ever get out of here, I’ll be able to attend more conferences in the future and offer something of value to the higher ed web community.
To be continued…
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I hear ya bud! Glad to hear. Don’t know if you have been following the adventures of my blog or not, but you should definitely read my Six Month Blog post, heck you should go read them all
, but that one kind of explains why I blog and what I’ve been able to accomplish through blogging.
So yeah it’s also 7:45PM EDT Thursday and I’m still at the Philly airport… *sigh* Guess what… our flight just got delayed again… Lol, at this point it’s kind of funny. Holla!
Hi Billy … great post and I’m glad you’re getting back to blogging, as I’ve done some stuff with that with the eduwebbuzz.com blog (need to update it tomorrow) and a personal blog. Besides that, I’m glad you enjoyed the conference and not only learned something but more importantly, enjoyed the networking of others in your field and in higher education. See you next year! Sorry about the Philly experience; I was driving home through that awful storm, so I definitely understand.