The annual Indiana Computer Educators (ICE) conference in Indianapolis was held last week and the thing I was sort of looking forward to was David Pogue’s keynote Friday. His topic was “The Digital Generation Comes of Age” and so I got a good seat in the back center row. Like others, my main exposure to Pogue was the Missing Manual books and his iPhone video. I also liked the idea that he was from the New York Times.
Here’s the outline of his PowerPointPresentation (unfortunately, my laptop couldn’t hook up with the convention wi-fi...or I would have liveblogged it):
“The Digital Generation Comes of Age” (What happens when these kids grow up) and here’s a link of the show at another educator conference in 2007.
- Opening slides were the typical “famous last words” regarding technology predictions (drew lots of laughs).
- To Extrapolate creates problems because its implications just don’t mesh.
Predictions
- Some telling the folk about VOiP and Skype (free and the kids just love it…so he said…I snickered and it was from this point on that I realized how thin this talk was going to be).
- T-Moble Hot Spot@Home (auto-switching between home wi-fi and wireless carrier when you leave the house. He was excited about this). I wondered at this point if he got paid for mentioning products such as these in his talks…I know, he doesn’t, it just cross my mind at this point.
- A la Carte Movies and TV watching (no more schedule to follow). Lots on iTunes and then mentioned Revver where you can make $$$ for your YouTube videos.
2. Broadband Everywhere (I wasn’t sure where #1 was)
- Lots of iPhone and iTouch references along with iChat and the possibility under Leopard to control a remote screen.
- Palm letter recognition alphabet which transitioned into chat and cell terms to know (along with his updated list).
- Perks for the Online Generation:
- Long distance collaboration
- A voice on the world stage
- (Nice reference to prosper.com)
3. Web 2.0
- User-created content and users are editors (e.g. Digg)
- Social media: blogs, podcasts, vlogs <=term he doesn’t like
- His slide on the grow of these new media have no proportion along the bottom access (which he admitted to later).
- The next slide illustrates (again with no real numbers or trends) that Things Splinter
- How do you keep up? (and here he makes a reference to a list of things including Twitter to which he says “Do these people have a life?”)
4. Challenges
- IU challenges (good screen shot of Word with all toolbars open) (ha ha)
- Copyright challenges (piracy and he actually said some surprising things here in regard to an article he wrote).
- Teaching online ettiquette and credibility.
Too much to worry about?
- Give it time
- Things will settle time
- Trust the public to choose
- Imagine the possibilities
And then he plays two songs on the grand piano (Imagine and a Medley to which the people simply love.
In short, I felt like the audience loved Pogue…he spoke on their level. To me, though, I felt like it was a thin presentation that lacked new applications and ideas on working with students. The audience liked him because he did what they like: talk about the new stuff but not really discuss the educational implications. That is to say, IMHO: few deep ideas to chew on and lots of the shiny new stuff that dazzle.
And, to be fair, I was probably expected too much. Later that day I was at the main counter at the Marriott to check out and we was getting some item that was taken away from him at the airport (”Because it wasn’t in a plastic bag” he told the guy behind the counter). And in the end, the good folk at the Indy Marriott gave him the item for free and he was gracious about it.
I don’t think my Twitter followers buy many of Pogue’s books (at least not doctorlinguist) or are fanboys of the Apple fanboy. There seems to be a general rule that if you get popular with the public, that the rest of the tech geeks say that you’ve “sold out.”
