I got up, opened up my lap top, and checked in with my e-learning students. Then I had a leisurely breakfast and made my way to the train station (just a few blocks from my place which is rather convenient).

Hopped on the train with plenty of time to spare and enjoyed the trip to Toronto. I love taking the train. Love it!

I walked to the Hyatt Regency and checked in only to find I’d gotten a free room upgrade! Sweet!

After dropping off my stuff in my sweet suite, I waded through a sea of hipsters to meet up with Shannon, Brent, and my Twitter brother, Royan. We were treated like rock stars: green room full of cookies and energy drinks, escorts to our speaking venue, bright, but flattering lighting on the stage, ubiquitous tech support… Completely stress free.

We only had about 30 people in our session but they were fantastic and asked wonderful questions, which led us to the conclusion that maybe we should speak on non-education centered conferences more often! This is not to say that the education conferences we usually attend aren’t fantastic, but sometimes we feel like we’re either preaching to the choir or encountering a lot of defensiveness. I think sometimes other teachers feel threatened when they see a presentation because they feel that the implication is that if they are not doing the same thing as the speaker that the presenters must think they’re bad teachers. The kind of defensiveness these reactions tend to provoke really prevent meaningful discussion

This was a wonderful experience and I really want to thank Shannon Smith for putting it together.

Things I’d love to see at our conferences that I saw at NXNEi:

• a slick iPhone app to help you organize the sessions that you’re attending
• well-designed super cool t-shirts available for purchase
• girls walking around giving out free gummy candy
• music!