One of the specific questions they asked me is if they can add their webinars to the calendar.  As I was initially creating the calendar, I had to decide whether to include webinars or just conferences.  I opted to exclude webinars for two reasons.  First, there are so many of them that the calendar would get very busy, perhaps making it less useful and more confusing.  Second, I don’t know how often webinars are changed or rescheduled; I don’t make any promises or assurances but I hope we can keep the calendar up-to-date and correct.  However, NACA is going to add their webinars to the calendar.  We’ll see how that works out and maybe we’ll want to add webinars from the other organizations.

I’ve always been a bit suspicious of those NACA folks with their ridiculously fun conferences (they have many performers – musicians, magicians, etc. – at some of their conferences because those conferences are a great place to audition and book performers for campus events).  But I’m reevaluating my opinion after this wonderfully positive response!

This has all of the national and regional events currently listed on the websites of the following organizations:

• ACPA
• ACUHO-I
• ACUI
• NACA
• NACADA
• NASPA
• NIRSA

I did not include state-level events or Webinars.  I think you could make a good argument for including them; if you’re interested in making that argument then you’re more than welcome to add those events!  I’m also sure that there are many organizations and events missing from this calendar.  If you notice something, please let me know.

I don’t want to maintain this calendar.  I don’t think it should be one person’s job.  If I could immediately and automatically give everyone the ability to edit this calendar, I would do so.  But I can only give specific people permission to edit.  So if you are interested in helping to maintain this calendar, please contact me.

(A side note: It would be nice if we didn’t have to create and maintain this calendar by hand.  Most of the organizations already included in this calendar only had an HTML/text calendar on their website.  A few had RSS feeds for their calendar.  And only one had a more helpful calendar – a Google calendar – but it is embarrassingly out of date.  Once again, we can do much better than this.  And we can do it cheaply and easily. How wonderful it would be if these organizations all had up-to-date calendars to which we could subscribe, automatically updating our own calendars!)

During this event, my primary technology-related thoughts were about how students could use technology to remain connected to one another to network and provide support.  Several students expressed frustrations about how (dis)connected they feel at their institution, particularly those from small programs or in unique situations like those who commute or take primarily distance ed courses.  It seems that we could find ways for those who attended this seminar to remain connected to provide that support for those students and open up new opportunities for one another.  Maybe it’s as simple as a Facebook group?  I don’t know if such an effort is sustainable or would be used by many participants but it might be worth a shot…

Unrelated to the doc student seminar: NASPA is making a big push to get attendees and members to use tools like Twitter and blogs.  NASPA has a blog set up for the conference and they are pushing – hard – for people to use the #NASPA10 hashtag for their Twitter posts.  And the #sachat folks are very active, too, with a demo planned for tonight at 6:00 Central followed by a physical meetup (a “tweetup”).

1. The Twitter group using the #sachat hashtag continues to grow in size and popularity.  What began as a once-weekly discussion among a few dozen folks has now expanded to two weekly discussions among over a hundred folks and significant activity outside of the scheduled hours.  They’re a very friendly and resourceful group and even if you don’t actively participate you should check in on them periodically to learn from them.  I am not participating in these discussions as I am formally analyzing the group’s discussions and I don’t want to “contaminate” the data by actively participating.  But you should jump in and join the discussions!  The group has even provided an introduction and instructions if you’re new to Twitter.
2. NASPA’s Technology Knowledge Community has put together a list of all of the technology-related programs at the upcoming NASPA Annual Conference.  There are many interesting sessions on the program and it’s unfortunate that so many are scheduled at the same time forcing us to choose between them.  I’ll be at many of the programs so please say hello if you see me!
3. On Sunday, March 9, NASPA’s Technology Knowledge Community and Administrators in Graduate and Professional Student Services Knowledge Community are presenting a pre-conference session entitled “Tweet: Point-Click-Connect to Graduate Student and Adult Learners.”  The program description:
   

   This full day workshop at Northwestern University will focus on the ways student affairs professionals can communicate with graduate students and adult learners using technology.Workshop attendees will review the various social networking sites students are utilizing, learn more about the impact of these communication tools on adult learners, and discuss ways to maintain a personal connection in light of automation.Participants will also have the opportunity to discuss hot topics and share best practices from their own campuses.

   Not only does the content sound exciting but the format is also exciting as this program will be offered simultaneously online.  I think this is the first time that NASPA has done this and it’s wonderful to see their willingness to try something new that will give non-attendees a chance to participate and learn.  More information, including the costs and registration instructions, are on the Technology KC’s website.

I wish that:

1. There were a listing of technology-related sessions at ACPA.  (I really wish we would get this unification started and over with so I could stop splitting my attention and money between two nearly-identical organizations but that’s off-topic.)  I know, I know – I could put together such a listing myself.  But I’m not going to ACPA this year and I’m not terribly keen on diving that deeply into the program of a conference I’m not attending.  It would be very depressing to read about all of the really cool things that will occur that I can not attend. :)
2. NASPA’s Technology Knowledge Community and the #sachat folks would link up.  It would give them both some excellent resources and energy.  It would give #sachat an immediate formal link to NASPA and access to some its resources.  And it would give the Technology KC access to a group of very excited, experienced, and knowledgeable student affairs professionals who are actively using technology in an exciting and innovative way.  This seems like a very obvious and easy connection to make and I am a bit confused why it hasn’t already occurred.

1. Attend the Knowledge Community Gala before the opening dinner.  At this event, each KC has a table where he or she places information about the KC, augmented by a poster, candy, giveaways, or whatever else he or she deems necessary (a determination that seems to widely vary from KC to KC).  The KC rep then hangs out near the table to answer questions, encourage new members to join, etc.  I thought that I had a decent spread this year with much of it focusing on our new website (go check it out; it’s pretty snazzy).
2. (Co-)Host a table at Monday morning’s breakfast.  Many tables were specifically designated as being focused on topical discussions and most (all?) of the topics were germane to two or more KCs.  Each table therefore had one or more KC representatives to help run the discussions.  I was partnered with our representative from the Sustainability KC and our topic was “Economy – sustainability and technology.”

My table at the Gala was sparsely attended and my breakfast table even less so.  Nationally, the Technology KC is a niche KC that only appeals to a small percentage of NASPA members.  When you get down to the regional level, the number of NASPA members interested in the KC and its topics is even smaller.  When you go all the way down to the number of people who attend regional conferences, that number is very small indeed.  And when you factor in the type of people likely to attend the regional conferences (i.e. it’s not a random sample of the regional membership), the number appears to virtually disappear altogether.  So it’s not surprising (although it is disappointing) that very, very few people indicated an interest in the KC and its topics at this year’s Region IV-E conference.

I’m not particularly bothered by the lack of interest in the Technology KC at this conference.  But I am very bothered by the lack of full-time faculty members and researchers at the regional conference.  I am bothered by the fact that the practitioners and scholars inhabit such radically different worlds that they have completely separate conferences (e.g. I can’t imagine there is much overlap between the attendees of NASPA and ACPA conferences on the one hand and ASHE and AERA on the other).  At this particular conference, the attendees seemed to be predominantly Master’s students, entry-level practitioners, and some mid- and senior-level practitioners.  I am particularly bothered by the fact that so many younger practitioners were being professionalized and implicitly and explicitly taught the norms of the profession at this conference, norms that now include the absence of “serious scholarship” (I place that in quotes out of deference to the quality research carried out by many dedicated practitioners but I think you get my point).

I don’t want to to go to this conference next year.  I don’t think there is much I can get out of it given the lack of overlap with the topics and approaches that interest me.  But I also feel guilty, knowing that I have a lot that I could contribute to the conference and its attendees; I only attended two sessions but I was honest-to-God complimented on and thanked for the comments I made and the insights I shared.  In this instance, I don’t know how to marry my interest in linking practice with research and my need for professional growth, particularly on my very limited (financial and temporal) budget.  And that tears at me and challenges me in a way that I don’t quite know how to match.

EDUCAUSE, the 900 pound gorilla of higher education technology organizations, has created an online component of their annual conference to be held in November in Denver.  Not only are several events in Denver being simulcast online but they’ve created several events exclusive to the online conference.  This is a wonderful option for those whose travel budgets have been adversely impacted by the economy.  I wish that many other organizations would make similar offerings but I also recognize the infrastructure and expertise necessary to put this together, resources that EDUCAUSE has but many other organizations do not.  However, many of the necessary technical resources are cheap and easily available so hopefully other smaller and less-technically-inclined organizations will pursue similar creative options.

NASPA is changing its official journal from the NASPA Journal to the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice.  I’m not privy to all of the details of the change and the reasons for it.  But one of the changes is that they are broadening the scope of the review section to include resources other than just books.  Specifically:

Media Reviews summarize and analyze the full range of resources (e.g., blogs, websites, video, books, reports) available to student affairs educators. Media Review manuscripts, informative and critical, allow student affairs educators to learn of media useful to their work. Media reviews, invited and solicited by the Editor, should not exceed 1,200 words, and are to be discussed with the Associate Editor for Media Reviews in advance of submission. NASPA members are invited to suggest cutting edge and novel media to be reviewed in JSARP.

The new editors are actively soliciting reviews so feel free to submit one.

Finally, ACUHO-I is also changing its journal.  As with the change at NASPA, I’m not privy to all of the details but I’m excited about what I know.  The changes being made by ACUHO-I, however, are not near as big the changes made by NASPA.  The Journal of College and University Student Housing has previously been published twice a year but beginning next year it will only be published once a year.  Content won’t be reduced, however, so each issue will be twice as large as previous issues.  Most interesting is that the editors will be including a “study guide” aimed at helping practitioners make use of each article.  Research conducted by my colleagues in the ResNet Applied Research Group should be included in the next issue of this journal.

ResNet professionals work hand-in-hand with residence life, housing, and student affairs professionals. These professions share common histories, traditions, and professional and personal cultures. Learning about these professions and their cultures, particularly their specific histories and relationships with technology, will make your work easier, more efficient, and more effective. Attendees will learn how to interact with, collaborate with, and better understand these non-IT professionals.

The program was relatively well-attended and it seemed to go pretty well.  I left a lot of time for questions and discussion and the amount of time I left seemed just right.  I could tell that some of the attendees were a bit bored but I know that this topic isn’t one that speaks to all of the ResNet Symposium attendees, particularly those who are more focused on technical issues such as network management. But it’s important and often overlooked.

I believe that not only are there different personalities attracted to technology and student affairs but that the two groups have very different histories and cultures.  For these two groups to work well together, they should have some understanding of the history and culture of the other group, something that many successful professionals pick up on informally and through hard-earned experience if not through more direct training and education.  This program spoke to the technology professionals, introducing student affairs to technology professionals.  (In part spurred by a question asked by an attendee at my program, I’m currently working with several other members of NASPA’s Technology Knowledge Community to put together a program that does the opposite: presenting the culture and history of technology professionals to student affairs professionals so they can more effectively collaborate.)

The second event on Monday was the Town Hall Meeting.  Dee Childs stepped down as President and handed over her duties to Sheila Crowe.  A few other positions were shuffled around before I was handed the floor to give a brief plug for the RARG, the symposium’s research arm.  Afterward, the meeting was devoted to discussing the future of the symposium with questions and comments being taken from the floor.  I had hoped this would be an expansive discussion but the entire conversation focused on whether or not there should be a membership fee.  I really didn’t understand or follow the discussion, particularly as it seemed to go round in circles with no firm conclusion or consensus. The proposed “membership fee” seems to be an ill-defined solution in search of a problem.

The remainder of the symposium was dedicated to the vendor fair, t-shirt exchange, and closing ceremony/dinner.  They all went over very well and were enjoyable.

I wonder about the longevity of this organization and its annual event.  Attendance was down significantly this year and while that is probably largely reflective of the economy I don’t see that (the lower attendance or the economy) changing in the next year or two.  Moreover, now that many of the bigger challenges of residential computer networking have been solved (standards are more developed, equipment is more prevalent and standardized, successful support models are in place and easily copied and modified, etc.) I’m not sure that the event as it exists has enough to offer attendees, particularly newcomers.  Much of the draw seems to be based on friendship and community, conditions that are difficult to advertise and extend to those who have not attended multiple times and become familiar with those involved in the event.  I believe that the ResNet Symposium must shift or widen its focus, perhaps taking as its purview a broader view of student technology support and student supervision, if it is to remain relevant and viable.

I took detailed notes for most of the sessions I attended but I feel that too much time has passed for me to write detailed descriptions of each session.  I like to do that right away to help me reflect on what I learned.  But this time around I made more of an effort to socialize, network, and enjoy time with my colleagues and friends so I spent more of my time doing that and less time on my computer engaged in solitary activity.  Of course, having my own presentation on the last day of the conference and spending time each night to continue preparing for it also significantly impinged on the amount of time available for reflection and writing.

As I become more experienced and professionally mature, I find my interests and ideas changing.  Those changing interests led me to pay more attention this year to trying to ascertain the maturity of the programs and services represented at this year’s conference.  In particular, I was interested in seeing (a) the maturity of the assessment activities carried out by ResNet programs and (b) the levels of strategic planning and how well those plans are integrated with other plans (campus-wide, divisional, etc.).  In general, it seems that even the most mature of the programs represented at this conference are still in a relatively early stage of performing assessment as they are still heavily rooted in measuring opinion and input/output (number and type of computers, number and frequency of computer lab logins, amount of bandwidth consumed, etc.).  Learning outcomes seems to have not penetrated to many of these programs, perhaps because many seem to see themselves primarily as service centers with minor auxiliary educational responsibilities.  On the strategic planning side, it’s hard to gauge the level of depth and integration of these programs’ plans given the focus of many of these programs and the interests of the participants.

Brief reflections on some of the specific sessions I attended:

1. Keynote address: Leading Geeks

   Paul Glenn, Computer World columnist and author of How to Manage and Lead People Who Deliver Technology presented the keynote address at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. His talk focused on explaining how “geeks” are different from other people and how to lead geeks in an organization. I’ve become a complete academic snob so I didn’t really enjoy this talk as the depth of his research was very shallow. Luckily, much of what he said is relatively close to what the real research says (yes, there is actual research into the social and cultural phenomenon of “geeks” … and “nerds”). If you’re interested in learning more about Glenn’s thoughts about leading geeks, he maintains a website at leadinggeeks.com.

2. Session 1: From Labs to Learning Space: Enabling Student Use of Technology

   Beth McCullough, Learning Spaces Manager for Stanford’s Academic Computing group, led a practical discussion of learning space concerns. Much of her discussion focused on her attempts to maintain and rehabilitate computer labs in Stanford residence halls. I greatly liked how much of her presentation and the decisions she has made are tied to data collected from and about Stanford residents as too often we make decisions in a void (see above regarding the current state of assessment in most ResNet shops). The most interesting discussion related to working with housing professionals in understanding and trying to reconceptualize how they understand (and use and fund and label and maintain and…) study spaces that happen to have computers.

3. Session 2: Strategic Planning: Transforming Ideas Into Reality

   The second session I attended was presented by my good friend from Northern Illinois University, Jan Gerenstein. Jan is an Associate Director in their housing department and a former colleague in the ResNet Applied Research Group (RARG). She discussed with us how her group – Residential Technology – is participating in and integrating themselves into their division’s strategic planning process. This was a very interesting session for me as I strongly suspect that it would have been very different if Jan’s group were housed in a technology division instead of student affairs. Based on several years of observation, the cultural differences between these two groups – ResNet operations housed in central IT vs. those in housing – are clear (a topic that was the basis for my own program at this year’s ResNet Symposium and a potential program for NASPA’s 2010 conference). But I wonder if the different planning and assessment skills and emphases and driving these two groups farther away in terms of their goals and services. The reason why we ask about the program’s parent group (central IT, housing, etc.) on the ResNet surveys is because we – or at least I – strongly believe this to be one of the key lens through which we can and should examine and understand residential computing.

4. Session 3: Millennial Misconceptions: How to Work Successfully with Generation X

   I didn’t take very many notes during this session. Karen McRitchie of Grinnell College did a great job with this program but I struggle mightily with programs that seem to arbitrarily lump together so many people and draw conclusions about those people from limited and flawed data (is my bias and academic snobbery showing?). During my darkest, bleakest moments in these sessions, I want to bludgeon Howe and Strauss with their own book. Karen was very complimentary of the students with whom she works and I was very happy that this was explicitly not a session that bemoaned the fate of the world today with Generation X taking the helm. I was most interested in this session as it closely mirrors so many (so many!) programs at student affairs conferences I’ve attended.

5. Session 4: Adventures in Cyber Security: Tufts and Yale

   Judi Renni from Tufts and Loriann Higashi from Yale are ResNet old timers and they presented a wonderfully entertaining and informative session describing their latest efforts at getting students interested in and aware of better security practices. Unlike most ResNet Symposium programs, this one was not videotaped; the presenters showed us several videos that made fair use of copyrighted material and they (and their lawyers) didn’t want those videos to be recorded and distributed. Judi and Lori also took advantage of the privacy offered their session by sharing with us frank (but not disrespectful, disparaging, or unprofessional!) evaluations of their entire processes from start to finish. We very much appreciated their honesty, particularly when they were brave enough to share with us their challenges and failures. Some of the Tufts materials can be viewed online as can the Yale materials.

The PowerPoint slides from the workshop can be found here. My speaker notes, good and bad, are there too. I removed the videos from the file due to both copyright concerns and to keep the file size manageable. The file is still a bit large (7.3 mb) probably because there are 70 slides and some of them have large images culled from Flickr. Of course, the original content I developed for the workshop is all available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License (I forgot to include that in the actual session) so if you’d like to use this for non-profit work then you’re free to do so.

The content of the workshop was broken into 3 sections:

1. Web 2.0: We discussed common perceptions of Web 2.0 and then worked to come to a common definition of Web 2.0. We then compared our ideas with those of Tim O’Reilly. I then presented John Suler’s ideas about Online Disinhibition as important ideas in understanding the draw and success of Web 2.0 tools.
2. Social Network Sites (SNSes): This section was an update and compression of a pre-conference session I presented last year at ResNet. This time, however, we had several new pieces of research upon which to draw: boyd and Ellison’s JCMC article Social Network Sites: Definition, history, and scholarship and the book Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, particularly boyd’s chapter. Older research that is still informative and used in this section of my workshop includes Brett Bumgarner’s research (first an undergraduate thesis and now a First Monday article) and Matthew Vanden Boogart’s 2006 Master’s thesis.
3. Technical Foundation and Examples: The final section was an attempt to extract some technical foundations from the previous discussions and present some examples. I’m afraid this section was the weakest of the three, particularly the “technical” part. The examples are okay and I know that attendees here at SIGUCCS will have the opportunity to see many more examples of much more recent vintage at presentations here at the conference. Some of the examples were drawn from NASPA’s Tech Tools program.

The pre-conference workshop itself went well. Although the group was small the discussions were great and we all interacted very well. It was particularly interesting that in this small group over one-third of the participants were from countries other than the United States; one attendee was Canadian and two were Norwegian. I felt bad that my perspective (shaped by my experiences, education, and attention) was so American but our Canadian and Norwegian colleagues were fantastic in helping us out and sharing their experiences and perspectives.

I’m hanging out in Portland for the next few days and attending some of the programs here at SIGUCCS in between reading, writing, and other classwork (no sight-seeing for me unless those sights are in or right next to the hotel). The topics of discussion here at SIGUCCS are not challenges I face in my current position but I am about to start performing some research on full-time higher ed staff who supervise student employees so there is still a lot here for me to pick up and absorb.

College and university student use of online technologies and forums can present challenges for student affairs administrators at every level.  The expanding terrain of cyberspace brings forth questions about student conduct, attitudes and freedoms in online forums such as social networks.  Participants of this Webinar will explore how the law applies to administrators monitoring and responding to online student misconduct.

The event is scheduled for October 10 from 1:30 to 3:00 Eastern.  More info, including pricing, can be found on NASPA’s website.

I’m disappointed that the webinar costs as much as it does (early registration would cost me $75 as a student member of NASPA; that’s $75 for an hour-and-a-half webinar!) but I might try to fit this into my schedule and budget.  I would be interested not only in what the presenters have to say about the law but also in what they choose to discuss as a measure of what technology and legal issues are important to student affairs and higher education.