This is just a quick post to share something I found very interesting and well written — even if it does come from the (fake) Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.  The post, “Why the mainstream media is dying” shares a tale of how the blogosphere can go after a story unencumbered, while someone as powerful as the NY Times can simply move right on by.  Not sure I totally agree that once the newspapers are gone we won’t notice, but I will say that the landscape is moving so quickly under our feet that we may not have time to care.  I don’t know, but I thought it was a terrific...

Today kicks off the TLT Symposium weekend and I couldn’t be more excited. Throughout the year I travel to events across the country and it is always so cool when I can sit back and watch our own kick off and inspire people right here at home. This year is our largest Symposium to date — over 400 people are registered! The theme this year is “Reimagine” … we are placing that in front of all sorts of concepts — scholarship, literacy, portfolios, etc. It is a powerful message at the right time. We’ve followed an arc of sorts in the planning of these...

OK, so its been nearly a week since our own TLT Symposium took place here at Penn State. It has honestly taken me this long to sort of let the dust settle and for me to put what I took part in into perspective. I could probably write a couple of sentences and be done with my reflection, but I know the feelings I have for the events of last Friday and Saturday are fleeting and not capturing them at length would be a long-term mistake for my own historical reference. I’ll start by saying the simple first — it was an overwhelming success that only happens when lots of dedicated people...

So the day after my Birthday and on the day of my Dad’s Birthday I am heading to the Penn Stater Conference Center for the 2008 TLT Symposium. No need to go into detail on what this thing is as I’ve been talking about it for months, but I will say I am excited. Excited my be a bit of an understatement as I am so jacked to watch Lessig deliver the keynote this morning. I was lucky enough to spend several hours with him yesterday, mainly listening. My favorite quote from the day was when he was talking to people from our Public Broadcasting group, “Public Broadcasting should...

I have been writing and talking about how Twitter has seemed to re-emerge in my life recently. I can’t seem to shake my re-found need to connect and share with the vibrant Twitter community. As a matter of fact, we spent quite a bit of time talking about it on ETS Talk 41 this week as well … So much of it has to do with the extended network I can connect to, but recently I am finding myself really engaged in my local tweets. As my friend Scott McDonald remarked at lunch the other day when I was saying I haven’t been this plugged in since this time last year, “its the...

Well we are now less than two weeks away from the TLT Symposium here at PSU. It is a very exciting countdown given the program looks great, the surround activities look fun, and with Lessig coming I have a real sense of excitement. Less than two weeks to wrap up the lose ends and to add a couple new little wrinkles to the mix. One such wrinkle is the addition of the “Tag Team” table to help Symposium visiters get started in the social software space … what we have decided to do is to have a table where people can walk up and feel supported in understanding how to use the conference...

One of the nice new additions to this year’s TLT Symposium are the beautifully designed Tag stickers. These were designed by Audrey Romano in ETS — I think the overall idea was a joint venture between the Symposium project manager, Allan Gyorke, and all the members of the committee. What I like is that they focus on the idea that people all over our campus are doing really interesting things with the platforms we are working on … in a lot of cases, many of these people don’t get the chance to talk directly with each other about what they are doing. So one way to overcome...

When we sat down to talk about who we wanted for this year’s TLT Symposium Lawrence Lessig was the firsdt name we threw out. We then instantly said it would be incredible, but probably not realistic … well, guess what? We got him — for real, here is the official word. For those of you who do not know who Lessig is, he is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society. He is also the author of several books and is world class speaker. I am thrilled! Save the date, the Symposium will be the day after my birthday,...