If yesterday was the entree todays opening day is a monster feast worthy of 10 Michelin stars. The opening and first keynote had it all. We had music, we had drones flying overhead, we had a Mexican wave, we had Google Glasses. And best of all we had Kevin Honeycutt. Now let me tell you, listening to this man speak is an emotional rollercoaster. It is an adventure. It is nothing less than SPECTACULAR. If you do nothing else in the next 50 years, go hear him speak! Seriously.

So what makes him so amazing? He told a story. Thats all. A story of how he pulled himself up out of one type of life and into the life he wanted, and was supported an inspired by some fantastic teachers along the way. He challenges each and everyone of us to be disruptors. He taught us that our biggest weakness is actually our biggest strength in disguise. Tell your story, record it, play it back. Share it! Just do it, perfect is the enemy of done. If you wait for perfect you will never get it complete. Embrace technology and the principle of L2L2L or Learn 2 Love 2 Learn. The Internet and technology is breaking down traditional barriers; you just need to find an alternative path to the end game.

And then just when you thought it couldnt get any more amazing – this happened!

Tweetwood Mac rocked the Opening stanza!

Get over to his website at www.kevinhoneycutt.com for so much knowledge and information. And did I mention what a heck of a nice guy he is too? Because he is.

So after the break I sat in on Dave Edyburns session called ‘Goldilocks and Technology Intervention Menus’. Dave introduced us to a four step technology integration strategy that moves away from the traditional ‘buy – use’ model. He explained how the process requires a significant investment in time to get the best result, but thats no different from anything else in life.

The second half of Dave’s presentation spoke about Technology Enhanced Performance Intervention Menus (TEPIM) which focuses on what students can do and how that can enhance their achievements. My takeaway from this is (and I apologise if I got it wrong Dave!) that a scaffolding model of support needs to be developed and assistance given to help the person move along the support continuum at a time that is appropriate to them.

Next up was the wonderful Mystie Rail and ‘No Roads? No Problem! Supporting AT on the Cyber Superhighway’ – an overview of how she supports people across a state that has snow, lots of snow. And big bears that will eat you. And moose walking free. Alaska, despite being the size of Queensland, has a total of 1000 miles of roads, meaning the vast majority of the place is hard to get to.This has necessitated looking for other ways of supporting people, with the who, what, when, where, why for services taking the lead and then worrying about the how!

As a technologist and probably in the very small minority at the conference in that respect, what came next was bread & butter stuff. See Mystie and her team have implemented what I call standard IT support technologies; Skype for video calls, Bomgar for remote desktop control and viewing, and Meraki for what we in IT call Mobile Device Management (MDM) but in English it allows the control of an iPad, smartphone or laptop from anywhere. They way they have used them is absolutely brilliant though and reinforced for me the need for all professionals to come together more often to share ideas – IT, OT, SLT/SP need to bond with the common goal of supporting people to achieve greatness.

By this stage I was fading fast but knew I had a couple more sessions to attend. A quick trip around the exhibition hall, refilled on caffeine, caught up with some vendors then off to see Harmony & Trina in their entertaining session about Twitter. Not going to go into too much detail about their presentation which was essentially Twitter 101, but I know it helped recruit more than a few new people to the Twitter Army! And it was almost a full house which reinforced just how interested people are about new ways of networking and building their PLE and PLNs.

Last session of the day got off to the BEST start, with chocolate covered coffee beans being handed out! This final one for the day was a bit of a case study on a groups use of Pictello to increase social interaction. Key takeaway for me from this was how if used correctly, and that is by using a statement then an open-ended question, Pictello can help prolong the conversation. Use templates to help get quick runs on the board, if you make it easy people will use it. Now I must include a disclaimer: by this stage of the day I was exhausted, my mind was stretched, twisted and generally a pile of mush so I may have missed so other important points from the session!

And just like that, 5pm was here. Time for more networking, catching up with some of the magical people that are here and unwinding from the days events. And preparing the body and mind for Day 2….

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