This past weekend, I traveled to Philadelphia, PA to attend EduCon 2.5 hosted by Science Leadership Academy. Educon was my first unconference. I’m used to going to a conference, finding a presentation that sounds interesting, going to it, listening and leaving. Educon wasn’t like that. Not at all. Instead of presentations, there were “conversations”. Someone always lead the conversation, but they were conversations. You interacted, discussed and shared with everyone else in the same session. It was something I had not experienced before and has me wondering why every conference isn’t run this way.
Even in passing, the short conversations I had with countless people were incredible. It was really neat to hear what others were doing and what they were struggling with. These conversations inspired me to keep working towards my sometimes impossible seeming goals, all while giving me reassurance that I wasn’t the only one running into obstacles as I do.
Certainly one of my highlights was finally meeting a mentor I had back in ECMP 355, Mike Kaechele. 4 years later and I finally got to meet him after working with him so long ago. It was a neat experience that I hope all other ECMP students get one day.
Because of having to catch a flight back early, I was only able to catch five out of six possible sessions. I still have remaining thoughts and questions from each session that I hope to share. I’m planning on making individual posts on each topic with my thoughts over the coming days. Let’s hope I can stick to that.
The whole event was streamed and recorded and can be seen by anyone on YouTube now. Just go to http://educonphilly.org/conversations and find a session you’d like to see and click “Live Stream” to go to the recording of it.
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