Travel

My Maricopa Thoughts

/ Cole Camplese / 4 Comments

I spent the first three days of this week in Arizona presenting at Maricopa Community College’s 20th Annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference. I was invited to be the event’s featured speaker and also present at a breakout panel. I have to say I enjoyed the opportunity tremendously and enjoyed the campus, the people, and the event even more. One thing to keep in mind if you are traveling out to the valley of the sun — it is hot. It took exactly one minute after we landed for someone to give me the, “yeah, but it is a dry heat” line. It didn’t feel all that dry to me … jeez I don’t think it ever dipped under 100.

A very smart and passionate group of faculty took part in a day-long event that saw somewhere in the neighborhood of what looked to be 150-170 people. One of the really cool things about the whole thing is that the Maricopa system is made up of a very diverse set of campuses — all of them do a nice job of coming together around the topic of teaching and learning though. The event also drew a bunch of people from other area schools — the brief conversation I had with the folks from Arizona State was very interesting and it gave me some instant ideas on integrating all the tools we’ve been working on to make it easier for faculty to select the services they want in their classes. I have to say it makes me think of the Edison Services toolset we built while I was at the Solutions Institute.

My breakout session was essentially the Web 2.0 in the PSU Enterprise talk I have been giving for quite some time now … I added a piece on using Web 2.0 philosophies to support and grow communities as well. The talk was well received, but I didn’t feel the typical energy in the room. I have a hard time talking to other schools about the stuff we are doing at PSU … I just don’t like that vibe all that much. It worried me a bit for the featured talk, but when the time came the audience was ready and willing to rock along with me. The talk felt great and it seemed like it struck a chord with a majority of the audeince.

My talk was titled, “Enabling the New Classroom Conversation.” I literally changed it up an hour before because of the intense focus on the Net Generation that the morning keynote provided. I ended up making some quick changes right before going on stage … I actually like what emerged better. It was greared again at taking the underlying notions of Web 2.0 and applying them to the classroom — not solely as technology, but as consistant princliples for cooperation, collaboration, and participation. The point I was trying to make is that there is something very exciting and interesting going on with the new breed of social tools out there that we should be paying very close attention to. These tools do amazing things to engage people and we should be working very hard to integrate these types of approaches. I was working to make the case that these tenants can lead us towards David Warlock’s School 2.0 concept … this is where I am spending all of my time these days … All in all, it went well.

Cool thing is that one thing usually leads to another. I’ve been asked by a couple of the participants if I would be interested in keynoting their events in the near future — of course! I have to give a shout out to the CogDog for making the recommendation to the good people at Maricopa. When I mentioned his name during the lunch talk several people clapped! They love you there, Allan! Thanks again for introducing me to a passionate group of faculty and staff.

3 out of 4 … A Travel Recap

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Note: This is as much for me as anyone.

So if you’ve been following the blog the last three weeks you know I have been on travel — some of it business and some personal. The personal stuff served as the bookends to three weeks of insanity. Three weeks ago I packed the whole family into the Pacifica and headed to Florida so my wife and our two children could spend time with the in-laws for a couple of weeks while I flew to San Fran to meet with Apple, then back to State College for a couple of days of work, and then to Chicago for a CIC Learning Technologies group meeting … that Chicago trip got me back to Florida for a week long vacation, joining my family. I have to say the week away was wonderful, but way too short.

The drive down was a bitch … we left on a Sunday and promptly got jacked up in the DC area due to a winter storm … three days later we were in Pine Island, FL … I got to spend an evening with the family before I left for Cupertino for the Apple trip. Getting there was easy and the meetings with Apple were good. That’s when the problems started. The return trip turned into a nightmare and a day and half later I was red-eyeing back to State College. Trust me, we made the most of the extra day in SF — if you are going to get stranded in a city, make it SF … I’m just saying, it is the right place to be. Coming back to State College from the west coast almost always pushes me into quasi-depression as I just feel at home in Northern California. This time was even harder … my family was in FL and I was racing to pack a week of work into a couple of days before Chicago. The Chicago trip was good and the company was excellent as always, but the return from there to FL was a mess — strike two for the airlines. While in Chicago I got nothing but mis-information from the airline monitors, employees, and websites … it was a mess. I did finally get out of Chicago and back into FL so all was good.

A week on Marco Island cures all sorts of things — and this trip was no different. The week blew past and the drive home arrived away too quickly. We left Saturday morning under beautiful sunny skies … it was way too perfect to leave. The drive up I 75 in FL was brutal … it typically takes us 6 hours to get out FL, but 10 hours in and we had to stop. The boy (6 months old) cried most of the way as we sat in traffic like I haven’t seen in years … made it even more painful. So a night in St. Augustine allowed us to regroup for the rest of the trip … a whole day and still close to an hour from Georgia. Day two started fine, but that ended in South Carolina where we sat in pile-up traffic for an hour. Long story short it took three full days to get back and when we got to PA it was grey and a mess. As I sit here typing it is snowing outside … depression is a terrible thing.

But, with all that said I did want to mention something that cracked me up while we sat in traffic in SC. The Pacifica has integrated GPS so I was trying to find alternate routes to beat the traffic. As I was doing that, my daughter was happily looking at the in-car DVD system watching whatever movie we dropped in there for that two hour stretch. Finally my wife had pulled out my MacBook and plugged in the Verizon USB broadband modem trying to frantically find any updated traffic information. That means 3 out of the 4 of us in the car had our eyes glued to either an entertainment or information screen. A far cry from when I was my daughter’s age rolling to FL in the back of my parent’s station wagon. The other thing that jumped out at both of us was just how bad all the access to information really is. With a device like the iPhone getting ready to hit these people better get their shit together, because when people need information there better be information waiting for them. Ubiquitous access doesn’t mean shit if there aren’t people providing ubiquitous data. I’m just saying … this whole trip has shown me a lot about how bad information systems are in this country — unless of course all you want to do is watch a DVD.

Why Do We Do It?

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I think I know the answer to why we spend all of our time living in places that are less than perfect … for me its all about opportunity and reality. If I could afford to live on an island somewhere I am sure I would … problem is, aside from working in the service industry, there just aren’t a ton of jobs available for someone like me. The other side of it all is that if you live in paradise you most certainly have to work in paradise … to me that just sort of kills the whole thing. I guess for now I am happy with just visiting and spending some mindless days watching the sun go down. With that in mind I’ll share with you some pictures so far.

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Another quick thought. My wife and I were pulling some pictures out to throw up on Flickr and we both got a bit of a kick out of the fact that out of the 215 we’ve taken so far only 30 made it. When I said that she looked at me and reminded me that was a little more than a standard roll of film a few years ago. Shoot digital, plug in the camera, let iPhoto pull them in, and instantly publish to Flickr — really amazing. And another thing, literally 30 seconds after posting the pictures I had a comment on a photo from someone I had never met. Amazing.

New Look

/ Cole Camplese / 4 Comments

Nothing too interesting, just a new look here at the old blog. Trying out a new, more modern version of K2 built for three columns. I like the way this one does the three thing — big to the left and two smaller ones to the side. It has a built in banner rotation deal, so I created a few new banners from images I had. There certainly seems to be a theme in those — spring, summer, travel. What can I say, I am jonesin’ for some good weather and have been on a bit of a travel bender lately. Let me know what you think. Tomorrow it is off to Chicago, so who knows what the posting around here will look like … you know the drill, no promises.

A Giant Sucking Sound

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That sound you hear is silence … since my three and a half week travel extravaganza started a couple of weeks ago my mind has not been able to focus. I have been stuck in winter weather along I-95 while driving to FL, been stranded in airports, cities, more snow, and now I face another leg of my journey with a pre-dawn flight to Chicago. I get to spend a little more than 24 hours in the windy city before I get to go back to FL for a little vacation time … that is the good news.

I spent several days — actually two more than I was supposed to — in northern California last week (and weekend) meeting primarily with Apple. As usual, our hosts were great — lots of good conversations, smart people, demos, and information that helps me make real decisions about real projects. I try to never miss a chance to spend time with a couple of key people at Apple. The thing with going to Apple is that the whole time you are there your head is spinning with stuff. You can’t talk about any of it because Apple takes its information very seriously and it takes years to establish trust with them … what that means is that my mind is filled with things I’d love to talk about, but can’t. It means my blog goes dead. Sorry about that.

Tomorrow morning I fly to Chicago to meet with the CIC Learning Technologies group. The CIC is essentially the Big Ten on the academic side of the house. It means I’ll get to spend a day an half with peers from schools that are heck of a lot like PSU. We’ll have time to share updates on a whole host of things and I am sure there will be some good bar talk about the things we aren’t really ready to share widely. I will attempt to capture some of that in a post that makes some sense — I need something to jar the wedge out of my brain. For some reason since traveling to the west coast I can’t focus or put two sentences together. Maybe over time it’ll get easier, but right now all I hear is a giant sucking sound in my head.

Airlines Suck

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

This really should be about travel in general, but if you give it time you’ll see that it is really about customer service and how a lack of information is bad. I’ve been traveling like its my job lately … last week I drove the family down to Pine Island, FL and got caught just outside of Washington D.C. for the night in a freak blizzard like storm. The next two days were spent fighting traffic and timing stops so my 5 year old daughter could use the bathroom and my 6 month old son could feed … let’s just say it was a very long trip. We arrived to beautiful weather on Pine Island and I got to hang out with the family for a little over 12 hours before I left for the airport to fly to San Francisco to meet with Apple and a handful of other people/companies.

Yesterday I went to the airport with two of my colleagues to catch our return flight to State College only to wait in line for close to two hours at the US Air ticket counter. We thought it was taking a long time and didn’t understand why every single person left there in such a hurry. Turns out the flight was a US Air flight, but it was being operated by United. If you’ve been to SFO the US Air and United desks are not close to one another. By the time we realized what was going on we had missed our flight and were informed that the next flight they could get us on doesn’t leave until tonight at 10 PM. So, another couple of hotel rooms and nearly two more days away from home. All the while my family is enjoying the sun in FL — the bad part is that my two friends’ families are waiting for them to return as well. What a pain in the ass.

This isn’t the end of the travel train for me. Thursday at 5:30 AM I head to Chicago for a CIC Learning Technologies meeting and then fly back to FL to actually see my wife and two children … at this point that is what is keeping me going. Long day coming up and even a longer night on the red eye … all of that could have been avoided with a sign that simply alerted all 300 people in line that this was the wrong line. I understand communication is a novel approach, but in a situation like this it might have worked. I’m not talking about killer web apps that give you up to the second information or anything like that, I am sort of thinking of a person who could just do their job and make an announcement — “Hey, you are all in the wrong line.” Customer Service Representative, right …

So there you have it … I have been off blog for about two weeks while traveling and meeting. It doesn’t look good the next couple of weeks either.

Crazy Comes in all Flavors

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

Indulge me … Traveling sure can be interesting.  Airports, airplanes, rental cars, and the people who work, interact, and seemingly live within them can make it all so difficult. I know it must be a real pain to get up everyday and head to the airport for work — there are always people there wanting you to help them, or show them to their gate, or ask you questions like, “is this where I drop off my car?” Believe me, I can understand, but at the end of the day they picked the career path.

Flying in from Austin to DC earlier today the steward (I am guessing that is the male term for the guy who hands out the drinks and scowls at me for asking questions) made my life tons of fun as I was sitting there. Every other person (correct that, passengers) who walks down the aisle works very hard to avoid slamming into people’s arms as they sit in the size challenged seats. I even paid for the upgrade to get an “extra 5 inches of legroom.” Every time he walked by he slammed into me harder and harder as to tell me I was in his way and to make me realize how lucky I was to be in his airplane.
At the Dulles International Airport as I waited to catch a rubber band powered glider back to State College I got to watch a show that would never make it on cable TV — the language and drama would make Tony Soprano scratch his head — or whack someone. Let me share a couple of examples of the love that is present this time of year in the airports …

Scenario one … Two guys showed up at the bar at the same time at the only open stool … they stared each other down like Rocky does the Russian dude in the one sequel … after about (and I am not kidding) 10 minutes of stare down, the one guy just yelled out, “fuck this, you are a real asshole!” He then just stormed away. Hmm, not all that together for an airport. How’d he get through security? I honestly thought there was going to be an all out fight break out between these two guys. The one who stayed just laughed and stared at him while the stool loser walked away. BTW, the winner didn’t even sit down.
The other was this woman who told her husband that she didn’t want to sit with him and top piss off so he stormed off … she then proceeded to cozy up to some guy at the bar and tell him to order her a drink — did I miss something here? She then yelled at the bartender for not paying attention to her and got pissed at the guy next to her as he sat down — I guess because he was too close … who knows. I went back to listening to my audiobook only to look up and notice this same lady was now crying and showing the stranger next to her pictures of her when she was young. I hate to say it, but I tried to listen, but I couldn’t make out the crazy talk through the tears.

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This is what travel does to people.

All that happened in about a 20 minute span as I grabbed a quick beer trying to kill time between flights. I know Steve Martin and John Candy already made the best travel movie ever, but just hanging out at the airport could create a TV series that would rival anything Seinfeld ever pulled off. Sorry for the rant, but a full day of traveling and watching the drama around me was just too much to keep to myself.