As the fall, 2013 semester begins, I thought it appropriate to reflect on what happened during the summer. As was the case last year, this was an incredibly busy time for me. Not only did I provide a number of “train the trainer” sessions throughout the country, I helped run the national web design contest and was privileged to be a part of the Adobe Education Leader Summer Institute. All told, I calculated that I traveled over 10,000 miles (mostly by air) and touched the lives of over 20,000 students. Combined with my estimate of 30,000 from the summer of 2012, I am humbled by the opportunities I have been afforded to share and learn. Yes, that would be 50,000 students affected.
Rather than provide a detailed itinerary of events I participated in, I thought it best to look at the bigger picture. These are the events I was a part of this past summer (with a few notes).
Week long seminars (yes, there were some duplicates in various cities)
- Web analytics, business intelligence and big data. I was able to use the Walton School of Business (University of Arkansas) data sets for this class. This was roughly 20 terabytes of Sam’s Club and Dillards sanitized data. Additionally, we reviewed a number of tools which can be used to gain insights into who is visiting what content on a website (for example, we reviewed Adobe Site Catalyst – including the social media capabilities). I am amazed at how quickly this has emerged as a viable topic. I estimate within the next five years, we may be able to offer introductory classes for small to medium businesses to utilize appropriate tools to gain insights. This is clearly an example of Moore’s Law in action. In the past, it would have required a masters degree in statistics or a related field, soon, the tools should be available to help everyone. For example, there are already plugins to Excel which pull Google Analytics data for subsequent analysis. I found it mist interesting to work with individuals in this course. Participants had a variety of backgrounds and we shared a number of interesting insights as we reviewed the data. This week long seminar was part of the Web Professionals Summer Seminar series.
- Content management systems. I also presented a course on WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, and Adobe Business Catalyst at various venues during the summer. During the class in San Francisco, I had the privilege of having Sam Bowne in class. He focused on security aspects of these environments and we gained many interesting insights because we shared knowledge. For example, one can crack WordPress passwords in a data store almost as quickly as Windows passwords. Joomla! is only slightly better. Drupal seems to be the most robust in terms of the open source alternatives. In the image below, I am presenting an overview of the class in San Francisco.
Web design contest in Kansas City. Every year, I encourage students to participate in this event. I can’t stress this enough. This year, we had roughly 30 teams compete in the secondary contest and 15 teams compete in the post secondary contest. More information can be found on the Web Design Contest website. Every two years, a student is selected form the national first place team to represent the US in the International web design contest. My colleague, Bill Cullifer, Executive Director of Web Professionals.org participated in this event in Leipzig, Germany this summer. I will be participating in the next one in Rio de Jainero, Brazil in 2015. It is quite a thrill to stand in front of 15,000 people and award the medals.
Adobe Education Leader (AEL) Summer Institute in San Jose. This was the fifth year in a row that I was able to participate in this event. Without a doubt, this is the event I look forward to every year. It is great to spend a week with like minded, highly creative and passionate teachers. It is a high honor to be recognized as an Adobe Education Leader. Although there roughly 250 recognized throughout the world, we have directly impacted the lives of over 4.9 million faculty and students during the past year. The Summer Institute brought together roughly 100 AELs from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Belgium, The Netherlands, China,Turkey (and other countries). Those who were not able to attend in person have the opportunity to participate in Connect sessions and listen to session recordings. I never cease to be amazed at the connections which are established at this event. One simple example – I discovered that the son of an AEL I have known for some time is the CTO of Haiku Deck. It really helps to be able to associate people with the applications they work on. I constantly stress the importance of networking to students and this event is the ultimate networking experience for me every year. We did have a lot of fun this year as well. Monday, July 29 was designated “shiny shirt day” in honor of Jim Babbage. I thought you might enjoy this photo.
During the past months, I have lead a mobile best practices special interest group. We presented our final report at the Summer Institute. This turned out to be a massive project. Rather than stopping, we decided to broaden our membership and continue working on a website which will serve as a repository for many of these best practices. Given that there are roughly 1 million apps in the AppStore and another million in the Google Playstore, we also want to highlight the apps which make the most impact for educators. I anticipate this will remain a work in progress for quite some time. Here are the presenters just after our session.
As the event drew to a close, I participated in my last Advisory Board meeting (my term expired last month). It was quite an honor to represent the AEL community. I am humbled that I had the chance to serve and wish those new members of the board all the best. What I like best about working with AELs is that we leave our egos at home and focus on common items. The Summer institute closed with a night at the San Jose Tech Museum. Tom and I had fun with the robots. It was a great way to end the event and to finish my travels for the summer.
Ok, I covered a lot of the US again this summer. I met a lot of great people and affected the lives of many students. So, what did I gain form these experiences?
First, it is important to be open to new possibilities. Without being prompted to develop a course on big data, business intelligence, and web analytics, I would have not had the opportunity to communicate with authors of related textbooks. I would also have not had a fuller grasp of the rapidly evolving landscape in terms of tools that are becoming available to work with large amounts of data. I learned a lot (perhaps more than the participants in my class).
Second, be open to alternative views. During the San Francisco class, I learned a lot about security. I think it is great we were able to modify the class to meet the needs of the participants. Being flexible (and keeping an open mind) is an asset I find more and more helpful as I work with many different technologies.
Third, collaborate with like minded people. I had so much fun this summer. Essentially, I did not encounter a single negative personality. I found that very refreshing. Doom and gloom is easy. It is tougher being positive, but very important these days. I also found it incredibly helpful to stretch myself. Whether learning about big data or adopting design thinking skills at the AEL Summer Institute. I learned a lot by engaging with others. I encourage students (and any other readers) to be open – the best way to respond to a statement is with … yes, and…
I am curious as to others thoughts and comments. There is space below. I look forward to your thoughts on this post.
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