The venue is booked and our agenda is set. Technical Congress 2019 is shaping up to be topical, tropical, and truly the best yet.
Our goals for this event are to connect you with your peers in the Ed-Fi Community, hear from you about what’s working and how we can improve, and to get your input on what’s next for Ed-Fi.
If you’re joining us at the Technical Congress this year, be prepared to roll up your sleeves and contribute. We’ll kick off Wednesday afternoon with an ever-popular Darts & Laurels session. This is where you get to throw your darts (areas you feel we can improve on) and hopefully share some laurels as well.
From there, we’ll get right into the good stuff: breakout sessions on the most important and pressing topics related to Ed-Fi. These sessions are not the “sit and get” type. We’ll be asking you to lean in with your questions, comments, and suggestions throughout.
There are two big changes to the Technical Congress programming this year:
- The Bootcamp Track: This is for hands-on training in some of our technical subjects. Join this all-day track on Thursday to dig into various technical topics like the Analytics Middle Tier, Utilizing the API/ODS for Learning Standards, and Hands-on with the Data Import Tool. Check out the agenda to see more.
- Ed-Fi 101: Last year we had a bunch of folks that were new to Ed-Fi join the Technical Congress, which is fantastic, and we recognized that some of the breakouts were digging into some pretty heavy technical areas that assumed a level of expertise on the Ed-Fi Technology Suite. To ensure that newcomers to Ed-Fi are completely up-to-speed and engaged, we’ve created an Ed-Fi 101 session on Thursday. So if you’re new(ish) to Ed-Fi and have questions, this is the session for you. If you want to jump into some of the heavier topics then by all means feel free, but we want to meet everyone where they’re at.
- Birds of a Feather Dinners: I’m excited about this one. Our networking events are consistently rated as one of the best parts of our conferences, so we put our heads together and came up with a little spin on a classic. Instead of holding two networking receptions (we’ll still have one on Wednesday evening), we’ve decided to mix it up on Thursday with a series of topic-based hosted dinners.
In addition to the thoughtful agenda (shout out to Eric Jansson), this year’s event location is the perfect spring getaway. In case you aren’t Southern Living subscribers, which I’m sure you all are, it’s worth mentioning that the featured travel article in the latest edition was, “Why You Really Need to Visit St. Petersburg, Florida”.
I had wrongly assumed that St. Petersburg was a sleepy town for retirees, but this quaint little town is actually a mecca of art and culture, drawing crowds of international tourists every year. St. Pete’s thrives with scores of wonderful restaurants, beautiful Sunken Gardens, an impressive collection of Dale Chihuly glass art, and a world-renowned Dali Museum.
The location will be inspiring, the conversations fruitful, and the work will propel our Community forward.
See you in April! We’ll bring the flip flops, you bring some bright ideas.
