con season

Yes, kids, it's con season once again. Conferences, conventions: looks like I'll be hitting up both again this year, but mostly the former. Already hit up the Penn State Admissions Conference, just today finished the Penn State Web Conference, and next week is PACAC (Pennsylvania Association for College Admissions Counseling). Needless to say (and not too much different than normal), I may be a bit scarce.

Today's conference was impressive. Excellent speakers: great ideas, well-presented. Frankly much better than yesterday's pre-conference sessions, but that may be more due to the format than anything else--a tired me and four-hour-long tutorials do not mix well.

During the conference, I talked a bit with colleagues from Student Aid, after which one offered to meet up and exchange notes on different sessions, and others offered to loan me a few books that I might want to pick up. Very nice of them. After the conference, I sat for a bit at Legends with the keynote speaker and some of the presenters and organizers (plus one that I'm not sure qualified as either), rather by accident. I'd only intended to sit at the bar and quiz one of the presenters briefly. Only after I settled in did I realize who else was sitting with him, but I certainly wasn't going to turn down an invite to join them when they shifted to a table, especially since I hadn't really found an opening to start asking questions at that point (nor did I, but that's another story). An exceptionally pleasant bit of hanging out ensued, especially considering that I knew absolutely none of them beforehand. The conversation bounced between a whole bunch of different subjects I enjoy: blogging and fiction writing, new web developments and how the University can use such, as well as some banter about semi-current events at Penn State and filling in the speaker on those bits he wasn't familiar with. Excellent stuff, and rather got me interested in getting more involved in that community. I'd forgotten how easy it is to talk to people that are interested in similar things both professionally and personally, but I suspect that has a lot to do with being overloaded and rather sequestered out in Admissions.

Here's to being not quite so much so anymore, with the arrival of the new writer.