Categories
Adventure

AFP Seminar

Attended the AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals) Luncheon and Meeting Seminar today.  It was at the Frog Rock in Hammonton.  Normally I wouldn’t be found at such an occasion, but the seminar was “Online Communications: Pipeline to More Revenue”, so I figured I’d check it out.  Sean and I drove over, he seemed to know who lived in every home on the way there.  I just knew that we were in Southern New Jersey.

I’m so terrible at small talk and avoid people I don’t know, so the whole networking thing was a big awkward to me.  But, everyone one there was really nice and extremely friendly.  Of course I had to be one of the first people to introduce myself to the room, but I just kept it simple and think I did an ok job of not getting myself into too much trouble while addressing the room.

The presentation was pretty good.  I thought the speaker did a really good job.  You could tell that he was comfortable with what he was presenting and not just reading a PowerPoint presentation.  Although the information that was presented was nothing new to me, it’s good to see what others are up to and any latest trends going on.  I personally don’t agree on the room’s whole capture someone’s email address approach, I think that a user should be told upfront exactly what their email address may be used for up front.  No surprise emails down the road, that doesn’t build trust with users at all.  

While I can’t say I learned anything new today, it did get me thinking to developing some projects online that I have lost track of due to a lack of time.  So that’s a good thing, and hopefully I’ll get working on those soon.

 

Categories
Adventure Development

Edu Web Conference Day 3

12:48 PM

The Edu Web 2008 Conference is over and I’ve just returned to work.  Overall I thought it was pretty good.  Though I’d prefer more development sessions or at least more advanced sessions.  If this is held close to home again next year I’ll most likely attend if not present.  I found presentations on cloud computing and AJAX to be the most interesting.  Good event.

10:49 AM

I’m here a bit early for the next presentation.  Think I’ve checked everything out here and can’t think of anything else to do.  Next presentation is on embedding video, and hopefully it’ll be interesting.  This table I’m at is pretty dirty, think I’ll get up and move.

10:07 AM

Sitting in on a presentation for a FaceBook application called SkoolPool.  I’ll have to check out their site a bit more, this does seem like something worth checking out a bit further..  The presentation is cracking me up.  The guy has a fairly thick accent and a deep monotone voice, so I can’t make out a word he’s saying.  He sounds like a really bad Beatles impersonation.  It’s great.  And the co-speaker keeps interrupting him.  This is truly a classic presentation, a true work of art.

8:41 AM

Think I’m in the wrong presentation.  This is about web content management not working with web services.  Oh well, she seems to be giving a good presentation so I’ll hang around.  

8:20 AM

Charging up my laptop and checking email and news at one of the tables setup here with power.  Seems to be a smaller crowd today, guess people have begun leaving or perhaps are sleeping in a bit.

 

Categories
Adventure Development

Edu Web Conference Day 2

Edu Web Conference 2008
4:10 PM

Wow I feel really worn out.  Maybe it was that presentation that just ended.  Wasn’t too interesting to me, and I won’t mention in case that person might be reading this.  Think I’m going to one more presentation then will call it a day.  There was some pretty interesting things discussed.  The cloud computing was great, that’s something that I’m sure I’ll be using.  The AJAX demo was nice too, nothing new to me but talking to the guys afterwards was good.  It’s not too often I can talk to someone about AJAX, Javascript, PHP, and frameworks without having to explain what all that stuff is.

2:09 PM

Uploaded some photos to Flickr.  Have a few more to upload but my connection is timing out often.  I’ll try again in a little bit.  Went outside to the deck for a little bit.  Nice to get outside for a bit and away from computers and air conditioning.

1:21 PM

Just ate lunch.  Food was kinda weak.  I made myself a sundae.  

11:30 AM

I asked a question during a presentation on AJAX.  Wanted to know what YUI components were used on their site.  Doesn’t seem like there are many developers in the room.

10:53 AM

Just finished up watching a presentation on cloud computing.  I thought it was pretty cool.  I’ll have to check out Jungle Disk.  I have had an account with Amazon Web Services for a while, but now am motivated to go out and actually build something with it.

9:02 AM

Just saw Geoff.  He’s hanging out with the marketing track.  I’m now at a presentation on the development track.  I’m sitting next to Bob who I used to work with.  Didn’t expect to see anyone I knew here, so it’s cool to have someone to talk to about some of this geeky stuff.

8:04 AM

Took the tunnel here today.  Tunnels are very cool, never seem to get old to me.  Just ate some breakfast.  With a word like continental before it you’d think it’d be a bit nicer.  Oh well, the cinnamon bun thing was really good.  And the orange juice and fruit were good too.  It wasn’t the bad kind of orange juice and that’s a good thing.  I’m sitting at a table with some people who make me feel like a social butterfly.  I think I actually started a conversation or two.

Categories
Adventure Development

Edu Web Conference Day 1

Edu Web Conference 2008Today was the first day of the Edu Web Conference.  Conveniently it’s at the Trump Marina in Atlantic City this year, so it’s only a few minutes away.  I figured that I’d take Delilah Road out there and shoot right out to the marina district, but of course there’s some major construction going on and the road is closed.  So I had to turn around and took the Black Horse Pike instead.  Not too big of a detour.

I got there with plenty of time to spare so I checked out a few of the vendors set up in the lobby.  It seemed to be mostly CMS vendors and email marketing solutions.  Nothing too interesting there.  While both still have their uses I think they are in the twilight of their usefulness.  Open source CMS solutions are really getting mature at this stage and spam is really killing the effectiveness of email in my opinion (and that of the presenters too).

There were a lot of people there, I’d guess around 400-500.  Some came from far away.  Chatted with a friendly chap most likely from Ireland, and apparently there’s some folk all the way from New Zealand there as well.  Didn’t appear to be too many typical educators in the crowd (I will have to explain that type another day), mostly younger web people and some marketing people tossed in there for fun too.  I’d recommend purchasing some Apple stock as the majority of laptops there were Macs and the iPhone seemed to be brought up a lot.

 The opening presentation was pretty good.  It was titled “It’s the End of the Web as We Know It Redux” and was presented by Mark Greenfield, Director of Web Services, University at Buffalo.  He discussed the web in relation to higher education and where he thinks it’s going.  I did happen to share the majority of his visions, so it’s nice to know someone out there is on the same page with such topics.  His presentation can be found on his website.

Humorously the discussion of how they have their college catalog available online now was dead on with the views I happened to bring up in a little debate that was going on last week.  So it’s reassuring to hear that we have the same idea of sharing such information with our students that other institutions share.

In a room packed with big four year institutions, it’s great to know that our communtiy college by the shore is hanging with them if not ahead of most regarding our role on the web.  I had no idea where we stacked up with these schools living in my little bubble, but have to admit with the resources at hand we’re hanging in there and leading in some areas.  I guess that’s why I was just rewarded with a 4% raise, oh wait a minute so was everyone else…

After the presentation I hung out in the developers lounge for a little bit.  There were some guys in a dark room typing away on laptops and discussing mostly social networking and the implementation of CMS’s.  There were a lot of accents in that room, so I’d guess it was sponsored by some UK corporation.  I’ll have to ask tomorrow.  The late presentation didn’t really interest me too much so, I decided to leave at that point.  I was able to locate my car in the parking garage with no problems (I’ve had some disasters doing such in the past).

I’ll go back tomorrow morning and blog about anything interesting as well.  I’ll try and remember to bring a camera too and share some photos.

Categories
Adventure

Huge Moth

Giant MothJust saw the biggest moth I’d ever seen. Stood up from my desk to take a gander out the window and noticed something pretty big stuck to the screen on Sean’s window. At first I just asked him if he had a leaf stuck between his window and the screen. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a huge moth. I took a pretty bad photo with my phone, but it might give you an idea of just how big it was.

We opened up the window and set the massive moth free.

Categories
Adventure Sports

Saw 2 maybe 3 snakes today

While playing disc golf today in Vineland the Shepherd and I spotted two and perhaps even a third snake.  I never run into snakes, so it was kinda cool for me.  

The first encounter occurred when the Shepherd went to retrieve a disc that went slightly into the brush.  Apparently the disc landed right next to the snake.  It was a pretty large snake.  We were able to retrieve the disc without bugging him too much.

The most impressive snake on the day was a big black snake that ran across the top of a hill right in front of us.  Must’ve been at least three feet long, probably longer actually.  After doing some research on snakes found in New Jersey, I’m pretty sure it was a black rat snake, but may’ve been a northern black racer.

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