MEC day 2 is over

Time to put the feet up and relax after the second day at the Microcomputer Education Conference (MEC 2005).

Not as many people dropped by the booth today as yesterday, which I’d expect. I’m guessing there were probably 50 people. Several were repeats. And by the end of the day several recruited their colleagues to come by and see the Tablets too.

The last couple hours were pretty quiet–for everyone. The conference organizer dropped by and we talked about how things were going, what people were saying, and what might be a good idea for next year’s event. A Tablet track geared to teachers would be terrific, but a more modest couple of Tablet sessions would be fine. I’m still thinking through whether a booth at MEC for a Tablet ISV makes sense. What would be better is a group of Tablet companies getting together and showingcasing Tablets. I don’t know if MEC is the most economically efficient place for this or not.

Our last booth visitor was a gentleman pushing for the conference to do more with Tablets next year. He wants to see teachers talk about their Tablet deployments. The conference organizer suggested a session on managing a Tablet deployment would be a good idea too. Her “day job” partly centers around handling training for ASU’s blackboard system and she described how a cookbook set of solutions using Tablets and GoBinder would be a great idea.

We also heard that the theme of the conference–which wasn’t planned, but simply happened based on the interests of the presenters–is “one on one computing” in schools. In other words, rather than having computers in labs that students share, they instead each have his or her own computer. One school in southern Arizona, for instance, is building a one-on-one school from the ground up. Using Tablets? Nope. It’s an Apple only school. I don’t think they dropped by the booth–maybe tomorrow they will. I’d enjoy showing them what a Tablet can do. The Tablet is ideal for one-on-one computing initiatives and a case study presentation would be a good idea for the MEC audience.

Tomorrow is the last day. Exhibit hours are from 9-12 and I’m guessing the traffic will be lighter. No problem, this will give me some more time to walk around and chat with the other vendors. They often enjoy checking out the Tablets too :-).