Plan for the Conference Online!

As mentioned in Kevin’s earlier post today, the Conference Program Book is hot off the digital presses! Which means it’s time to start planning. And if you don’t have your cigar ready to go (you really should read Kevin’s earlier post), there are plenty of options for you to plan ahead online:

Start Your Own Conference Wiki
Always a popular option by the more tech savvy attendees, you could use Wikispaces, PBWiki, or Wetpaint to start your own conference wiki. Create pages for all of the sessions you’d like to attend, or just organize your thoughts online ahed of time, then come conference you have a nice online notebook ready to fill with notes, discoveries, and more. Bonus points for coordinating and collaborating with other members in your school district.

Do Your Homework
Many, if not all, of the featured speakers at the conference have their own blogs. They probably have Twitter accounts, wikis of their own, and social bookmarks that they’ve shared online. Pop the featured speakers names into Google and see what comes up. Pick out the good stuff, and subscribe to it, or bookmark it for future reference. Gold stars for people who use an RSS Reader to automatically pull in content from multiple sources about MACUL 09.

Start/Join a Discussion on the MACUL Space Forum
Alright, so I’m a little biased to this one, but there are already a few posts in the dedicated 2009 Conference discussions on the MACUL Space forum. You can use any of the three discussions to create or join a conversation about the Conference Sessions, Workshops, or Guerrilla Sessions. Might help to get an idea of where other people in the state that have simliar interests are planning on spending a lot of their time at the conference. Extra credit for starting a new topic about a presentation you’ll be giving.

Of course, there are plenty of others ways to plan and coordinate online for the upcoming conference, but downloading a PDF of the Conference Program Book is a good way to start.