I’m taking off to the New Media Expo conference in Las Vegas tomorrow. This is a new conference for me, and I hope to learn a lot about boosting traffic to sites, podcasting tips, and other timely stuff. I’ve been going to Educause, Syllabus (now Campus Technology), Ed Media and a few other misc. higher education technology conferences for years now. Frankly, I need to break out of the box a little bit. Rarely are the big conferences really able to provide much of use to small liberal arts colleges, I don’t really make meaningful connections to people who live thousands or even hundreds of miles away, and I’ve been doing this so long I don’t seem to learn much or feel challenged much anymore. New products by vendors are the main reason I still go – I get to talk to them about how their product might work in my environment, and that’s useful indeed. This conference has an education track, but it includes lots of new media professionals who actually do this stuff as a primary task for a living. It’s not seen as just some sort of education add-on, as so many faculty members see it – which is often disheartening for me since I see new media as transformative for those who really, truly want to engage in active teaching/learning. And if it doesn’t turn out to be as useful as I hope, then at least I’ll have visited Las Vegas, baby!!!