My First NECC!! (And it's no longer called that...)

I am so excited to be at NECC, the official conference of ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education. Librarians active in the American Library Association usually have a serious beef with ISTE. We all belong and it's a vital organization for us doing our jobs, but NECC is practically always scheduled during ALA's Annual conference (which, if you are on committees, is mandatory in terms of attendance). This makes us cranky because it means we end up going to our "librarian conference" (which is how our administrators or teachers might perceive it) and not going to the "technology conference", which sounds way cooler and affirms our vital role in educational technology.

Maybe it was a fluke this year or what, but ALA got pushed back to July 9th - 14th and NECC was scheduled for DC this week. You should have heard the cheering from librarians who no longer had to choose!!! I heard of plenty of librarians who are paying their own way just to come to NECC this year. I for one cannot wait for the programs and exhibit hall and I'm going to get a full complement of the ISTE NETS books for Wyoming Seminary's professional collection. I'm choming at the bit!

In following the live blogging for Malcolm Gladwell's opening speech (I just got here after a 5 hour drive, so I wasn't going to head over until tomorrow morning), I saw the ISTE tweet and Kathy Schrock's cheerful follow-up that ISTE has come to its senses and is no longer going to call the conference NECC. This will eliminate a lot of confusion; if people don't know about ISTE, trying to explain, "I'm going to NECC, the official conference of ISTE" becomes a real alphabet soup of jargon, and librarians are NOT about jargon, we are about making complicated things accessible. So thanks ISTE, for not being so complicated any more. :-)