Macworld expo, gnomedex or SxSW 2010 - What's a Media Educator To Do?

Over the past three years my attendance at Macworld Expo has been completely automatic but with Apple pulling out of the conference and then having the conference moved to February I’m not sure that attending the 2010 conference will be the best use of my increasingly diminished conference funds. I recognize that the Macworld isn’t just about the keynote, but I had the good fortune to go to the historic 2007 keynote when Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone and none of the following keynotes have matched that high. And as great as the keynote can be as far as being a geek rock show, the real experience is to rub elbows with my fellow apple geeks famous and not-so-famous. Alas, in the time between expos I haven’t made much of an effort to strengthen the conversations I’ve had with many a mac-pilgrim over the past three years. So not going isn’t as painful as it might otherwise be. Then I got a link to this year’s Gnomedex conference. I think I’m experiencing conference lust (a geek off-shoot of wander-lust). Damn.

Community is so important and I haven’t been to happy with my level of “commitment.” The last few times I went to my more local CUE conferences (Computer Using Educators) in California I was not too happy that I wasn’t more involved in presenting or contributing to the process, but I always seemed to be more than busy enough with my days filled with teaching and my ill-fated graduate studies. So, it’s not like I’m sitting around wondering how I might get more involved. but it seems hardly efficient to just go to these conferences hoping for a new tech/geek high. It’s just too expensive (especially traveling from the East Coast). Damn. What a media educator to do? I wonder when SxSW is going to be?

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