Citizen Schwab

This weekend, I’ve been recovering from last week’s CETPA annual conference in Monterey. I made it through my four presentations on Wednesday and managed to spend a good amount of time perusing the vendor floor Thursday. What struck me most was the ever so subtle shift of perspective happening in the community. BYOD and 1:1 is just around the corner. People know it and they also know we can’t manage IT the same way we’ve managed our environments in the past. I heard more talk of opening up access and enabling users than ever before. It’s exciting to see my once far out there perspective starting to become mainstream. (I talk about it more in this week’s rebootED episode)

Sometime during the week I got hands on with the 10″ Acer Windows 8 tablet. All I can say is, “Wow!”. That thing was fast, responsive and nice looking. The device wars are certainly starting to heat up with Windows 8 tablets finally becoming available soon, the $249 ARM based chromebooks arriving along with the rumored iPad mini announcement Tuesday. together with old faithful, ubermix netbooks, it all makes choosing the right classroom device all the more challenging.

But to the main purpose of this post. This year I ran for an open Director at Large position on the CETPA board. No, I did not lose a bet with Vollmert, although he did volunteer to be my campaign manager which surely has a punchline waiting for it somewhere. At first I thought that running would be an opportunity to push outside my comfort zone and try something new (I would also like to help guide CETPA through this changing time and perhaps bring a different perspective to the board from the big District/County Office perspective that appears to dominate at present, but that’s another post). I sent out emails to my friends and associates letting them know about the election and asking them to vote for someone (not necessarily me). I attended the after session receptions that I traditionally haven’t for one reason or other. Along the way I ran into old friends and made new ones and talked to more people than I probably would have had I not been a candidate on the ballot. There were a total of five other experienced technology folks on the ballot. All of them I thought better known and better plugged in than I.

 

The funny thing is that in the end, I came in second. Second isn’t first, but for me it might as well have been. I honestly had zero expectation of winning (thanks again to all those who took the time to vote for me though). I knew my friends and many of my Colleagues would support me but to everyone else (the vast majority), I’m just one of those “out there” guys from the small district who points out the obvious (by applying common sense) on our organization’s listserv now and again. So second place is pretty awesome to me. Should a position on the board open again, I may or may not apply. It will depend on where I am in my career I suppose. Things are changing so fast. One thing I do know though is that if I do decide to throw my hat into the ring again, next time I’ll have buttons (you taking notes Mike?).