I am guessing I have attended far more ISTE conferences than your average ed tech guy. I have begun to accumulate a list of “issues” that bother me. Some are my issues, but others concern the nature of large conferences, who funds what, and who is really benefitting from how things are done.
- Session attendance is very inefficient – there are too many attendees for the number of sessions. With “Fire Marshall” requirements and guards at the door, you must pretty much plan to attend a session in alternate time blocks.
- Keynotes are a waste. This may be a personal thing, but I do not attend conferences seeking motivation or general commentary.
- Is this a great way to network? I am probably an introvert by nature and nearly all conference conversations I have are catch up sessions with people I knew before. It seems possible that the networking that happens is mainly among the tech entrepreneurs with the practitioners spending time with their home town colleagues. This would make a great simple research project. Ask participants how many 15 minute or longer conversations they have had with someone they did not know? Could they reach these individuals if they wanted to continue the conversations?
- The cost – any conference that is not local costs a lot of money. Transportation, lodging, and registration typically come to well over a thousand dollars. For the record, I pay my own way. I am guessing this places me in the minority, but it does provide a certain perspective those who attend on their schools’ dimes do not have. Consider a different way of thinking about the money issue. If you were required to spend $1500 on personal professional development and you had to demonstrate the pact of your decisions would you choose to attend ISTE? There is no way I can argue this would be most beneficial. There is a great deal of free online content (video, podcasts, in-depth multimedia tutorials) and professionally generated tutorials available at far less cost (e.g., Lynda.com) that are superior to whatever you would experience at a conference.
For me, it is not the money. I just find ISTE to be a less and less productive experience. Mostly, I blame the inefficiency on the size of the event. There seems to be no way to scale the conference to the number of attendees. Perhaps no one can be blamed for this situation and this is the way things work. However, I do think it is a situation that should be evaluated by the organization. My go to conference has become FETC. The sessions and vendor access are similar with a smaller number of participants. I attend several conferences a year and I do not intend to give up conferences, but I think it is time to analyze the conference experience, who benefits, and what is accomplished.
Perhaps it is time to focus on the use of technology to learn about technology and technology integration. Perhaps it is time to experiment with professional development models that are not based on one time, concentrated experiences.