educause highs and lows

I'll add some more stuff about specific sessions over the next couple of days but in the meantime, quick highs and lows round up:

Highs:
- catching up with old and new friends and learning a lot more about what's new and interesting in learning technology....and the ELI ARG
- best session - Gardner Campbell and Jim Groom on UMWBlogs, some bold ideas, new expectations and scary challenges (also some really interesting student email stuff)
- being surprised by Greg Devine's new business - two main things are both things we need and have tried to do before with varying degrees of success
- getting to present at Educause - quite a buzz, though to be honest the poster was more of a high (as my expectations were pretty low and the levels of interest blew me away)
- being in US in the week before the election

Lows:
- the lowest low of all time low stuff was the crappy internet connection - bad in convention centre but absolutely shockingly bad at the hotel, I felt like someone had amputated my typing fingers though the phantoms kept on typing...
- keynotes not up to usual Educause standard - nothing to blow me away (final one was the exception, in many many ways - will post on that seperately)
- never once saw anyone I knew at the Blackboard stand - the new version looks great but the company's new brand-style is stylish and soulless, seemed more remote from client-base and felt more like a software provider than ever before
- staying in hotel next door to convention centre but it still taking 25 minutes to get going each day (yes really, I timed it, from walking into the convention centre door right next to my hotel it took 18 minutes to get to the room where breakfast served even though all on ground floor - it was like an aircraft hanger)