Learning Gateway Conference

I was honered to be asked to help out at the Learning Gateway conference which happened recently at the prestigous Belfry grounds in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.

I greeted around 150 delegates mainly from Education and LEA backgrounds.

The days agenda consisted of innovative technologies being used in education including
-A keynote from Steve Beswick who is the Education Director for Microsoft.
-A session on maintaing your SharePoint and best practises
-Microsoft Unified communications for the learning gateway, office communications server, Exchange.
-Ask the 'Exports" which consisted of a team of leading independant experts including MVPs
-Informal SharePint at the Belfry bar afterwards to the chance to discuss with educational suppliers


My own opinons of the day were first of all shock to see so many attendees flooding us at the registration desk and some even before the desk was open at 8:00 and to even have attendees from other countries. People even showed up that wern't on the list (you all know who you are!) now that is when you know you have a good conference, the guest speakers had a lot to do with that! http://www.learninggatewayconference.com/

The day certainly helped me to increase my understanding of the future of educational technologies Microsoft in particular SharePoint and user adoption. I met with real world experts.

It was nice to see so many familar faces myself, Steve Eyton Jones from Novotronix who works for a SharePoint implementation company as well as Alex Pearce from the Great Barr School (my former school where I was a student!) Mark Berry who travelled all the way from the Bradford Academy, the guys from Edugeek, a few of the admins and those lovely moderators who keep us in line on Edugeek and many more, sorry if I've missed you off!

To read the educational forums comment post on the learning gateway conference you can view it on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-edugeek-news-announcements/38960-edugeek-learning-gateway-conference.html

I would also like to say a quick well done and thanks to the speakers for the knowledge and last but not least a special thank you to Alex and Richard for organising the conference and putting me up overnight in the Belfry. Let's all watch this space for the next one!