"Blogging San Francisco, Part Three..."
Whew. My body thinks it's after 1:00 in the morning, and I can tell. Not sure how long I'll hold out on writing this post, but after spending all day at the conference, I am reminded why I come back here. I'm physically exhausted but my mind is jazzed. I realized that this is the ninth time I've been here. And the great thing about having been coming for so long is that I am at the point where I run into people every few minutes, and sometimes it seems like I spend more time in meetings than in sessions.

I'm thrilled with how our session went. Da Man and I were set to talk about the role that law and legal cases can play in the classroom. As a lawyer, he set up how to read a case, and I talked about what I've done with them. It was his first conference presentation ever, and it went really well. Because of the change in hotels (because of a labor dispute at the old one), the conference organizers had to set up tents around the exhibit hall to create extra presentation rooms. The acoustics sucked beyond all recognition, but we had eleven people at our talk who crowded around us. And we already planned to keep it informal with questions throughout and speaking from outlines. We filled the entire time and received some good questions and feedback, so I'm thrilled. Afterwards, one woman talked about our great synergy (her word), which made me smile. We've talked about working together in more professional ways, but this was our first crack at it. Maybe we should turn this into a co-authored article?

Another thing I learned about myself (there's constant introspection at these things for me) is that, while I despise small talk beyond all recognition, who cares? I was in several situations today where I met new people, and rather than chat with them, I just plain talked to them and had some real conversations, about out towns, our schools, our teaching. And when I run into old grad school friends, the talk is quick but covers the basics. How's the job? How's teaching? How are you doing with the tenure clock? Like where you're living?

Oh, and Cindy? Joanna made a comment about bloggers having cats and learning to knit. I was the first to speak up during the Q&A to say that I had to speak for you and remind everyone that some of us have dogs. So, you are truly here in spirit!
- posted by Nels @ 10:02 AM | | | Link |