The Road to FETC 2016

My weekend prepping for FETC was supposed to be easy. There was some sub planning, some session picking, and hopefully an epic trail ride with a buddy on our mountain bikes. Well. There was an epic trail ride. Planning? Not so much, instead, my head was wrapped around car issues. Then on Monday, it was teaching while getting rides and favors from friends, doing sub plans, and dealing with the (arguably evil) service department at the dealership. Still under warranty doesn’t matter if you have a sleazy dealership.

Anyway: By the time six o’clock rolled around, everything I needed to be done was done, and I was at the curb waiting for friends, waiting for my ride to FETC. And that’s how the whole day went. That’s how everything that worked went. So many of the things that I used for my sub plans were based on work shared by my coworkers. I got rides through the day from four separate people - friends and family. The fact that I have a press pass came from the encouragement of my friend Tammy, who said I should be writing, and that I should apply for credentials.

And I before I write a single word about George Couros’ keynote at the Executive Summit (I’m lying, here’s one word: YES), or talk about how awesome it is to hang out with pals from far away (Hey! to the awesome Shauna Pollock), or before I say much about the Student Publishing workshop led by Stephen Veliz (pretty cool - I’m looking at you, Pen.io…), I have one big idea that is resonating with me today. I’ll get to the excitement tomorrow, and there’s so much of it. I’ll talk about connections, and toys, and all sorts of new tomorrow. Today, I have one main idea.

For me, the big idea, and the thing that got me here is connection. Local, personal, gorgeous, lovely friends and family (and please, I don’t mean that my circle is made up of models, it’s just that if you look at the realm of possibilities in the universe, happy, sweet, healthy human beings are beautiful) people supported me in so many ways, and do every day. Then, there’s my Twitter friends, my connected educators, an amazing group of empowerers. Without them, my attempts at greatness would be so much smaller! Without these local and global connections, would I be here? No. It’s the people in my life, the relationships, they make me possible. I think this is important as we embark on a week of talking about technology and software - those are the tools, and they’re nice when you need them. But if you really want to innovate, it’s the relationships that are where we need to focus.