On Thursday I went to Durham for a Blackboard conference. It is the UK Blackboard Users' Conference that happens every year in Durham. I was the only one from Sheffield Hallam that went. The theme of the conference was web 2.0, which ties in well to trying to transform education at higher education in general, as it is all about involving internet users rather than just having them look at information.

The keynote was by a guy from the Open University, though it seemed like he plagiarized half his keynote address. I read an article on the web before the conference that he quoted word for word without citing them. I led a discussion about how the web 2.0 trend might affect e-learning. I think my session went well, as it was very interactive, and many people told me they enjoyed it afterwards. I was hoping for about 20 people so we could have a good discussion. As it was, the room had about 55 people in it, and there weren't even that many chairs. There were people sitting on the floor and standing in the hallway looking through the doorway. I enjoyed the rest of the conference sessions that day too.

The weather was pretty horrible in Durham: cold and rainy. The conference was about a mile or two out of the town center (not too far really). But for some reason, the taxis wouldn't come out to the business school to get us. I called several taxi companies at 6:30 and they all said they were fully booked. So I walked the 20 minutes back into town to my hotel. When I got there, there were three taxis from one of the companies I called sitting there waiting in a taxi stand. Seems strange they didn't want the business.

As a presenter, they gave me a complementary wireless powerpoint thing with laser pointer. Mine seems to be broken though. I'll have to send them an email about it.

At night, there was a conference dinner in one of the colleges. It was in a converted chapel. It has been turned into a dinner and dance venue, with the altar as a bar. It still has an organ too. Definitely not your usual dinner venue. The dinner was pretty good, and I had an interesting conversation with several other delegates.

The second day of the conference was good. I made friends with two guys from the Netherlands, and I had lunch with the Vice President of Customer Services for Blackboard, Craig Chanoff. It's always good to have the ear of someone high up in Blackboard to help get SHU needs across, but Craig was also a nice guy and I enjoyed talking with him.

After the conference, I talked a lot with another delegate who was going back to Sheffield. His name was Guy, and his brother is at the University of Sheffield. Once we arrived back in Sheffield, Victoria was at a pub, so I went with Guy and his brother Lance to the Blue Moon Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant. Guy works at the University of Reading, and does a similar job to mine. I gather they are a much smaller e-learning team there.

All in all, the conference was good fun. The only bad thing is that the LTI Christmas party was Thursday night, so I had to miss that. Last year I missed it for the same conference too.