I wrote the following as on the InstructureCon 2015 Public Postmortem on the Canvas Community discussion board. Some typos have been corrected & some links have been reformatted for readability.
Wow, I really think this needs a “must post before seeing other posts” flag. How do I follow Ted Coopman, Chris Long & Kona Jones? They have pretty much covered everything I would have said. But I quess I will try.
This was my 2nd InstructureCon, but the first where I came by myself. This made for a different experience because I did not have the comfort of a well known co-worker to hangout with. Knowing this, I intentionally reached out to others in the community. This was a true blessing, because the community is truly one of the best I have ever been a part of.
Keynote: All three were fantastic and I really liked having it in the Sundial Tent. The Josh Coates Keynote Bingo was amazing as well as helped keep me engage. Although I do still feel a bit cheated that it was given to us. On the serious side Josh Coates was great and on point. We can not have student centered learning without more empathy. Learning happens with human connection. Mimi Ito hit that home as well. We all got to where we are because of how other people poured into us. We all have learning heroes to thank. We also need to go and become those heroes to others. Derek Muller wrapped it up with a truly engaging & active presentation that demonstrated what student centered learning is like. Very strong keynotes.
Sessions: The sessions were great as always. I’m am in agreement that there needs to be more time between because I missed or walked in late to several sessions because I could not get there from where I was. Sometimes the rooms were overflowing and there was just no way to get in. Not sure how to do it, but may getting so polling prior to the conference on the sessions to better utilize the space. I also like the Q&A with the keynote speaker idea as a session immediately after the keynote. There were sessions that were very similar running a at the same time, ever right next door to each other such as Strategies for Teaching Very Large Course in Canvas and my session, Canvas and the Mega Course Factory. Large enrollment course is an area I am interested in and I would have loved to have gone to John Johnston‘s session to how they may handle it different for us.
Events: Fabulous. While it ran late, I think maybe having something like Game Night on Tuesday night would be nice. I met a lot of great people only to leave the next day. It would be a great “ice breaker” event. Hack Night & Course Hack Night were also great, but still a bit intimidating to know exactly how to jump in.
Other thoughts: swag is great as always, vendors night time the first night was a great way to give them exposure, food trucks are awesome, sunscreen stations saved my bald head all week, graphics and program were wonderfully designed, but I do like to write in my book so black pages made that tough.
I don’t want to end on a negative, so know that this conference is one of the highlights of my year and has the best people in the world. Until next year…
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