Reflections on EDUCAUSE 2009 Online

For the past two and a half days I’ve been hiding away in Olin 301 with a number of other colleagues from LIS and other departments around the college, attending the EDUCAUSE 2009 conference virtually.

This marks the first time I’ve attended a multi-day/multi-session event online, and have to pass on major kudos to EDUCAUSE for giving us the opportunity to attend locally, and for pulling it off with only a very few hitches. As an added bonus, we have access to most of the online sessions for three years, hopefully giving us for further reflection and discussion.

Session topics ranged from high-level examinations of “the ontological implications for the future of scholarly communication,” to case studies on how best to arrange server rooms to balance heat issues with energy costs. A topic that emerged at least once each day in the sessions we attended was the practice of maintaining a “Don’t do” list. As the constraints of time, funding and need grow, many experts were recommended developing a process for strategically abandoning issues or projects that no longer bear fruit — a challenging task in it self!

A session that resonated with me covered the Agile method of project management. This method is focused on rapid iterative development, depends more on risk management than risk aversion, and is conducted in an open environment that takes in input from all stakeholders. These ideas sparked a lot of discussion and interest from those of us in the room, and it is likely that we’ll be floating some ideas on how to improve the feedback and communication process around prioritization and projects… stay tuned.

For those who are interested in catching up on other back channel chatter about the conference, searching blogs, flickr, twitter, and even Google Wave for “educause09” should yield a great number of resources.