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It might be my favorite meeting of the year.
Not that the task is easy. Once again we were near-overwhelmed by the quality of proposal submissions we received for conference sessions. The thought of reading, vetting, ranking, grouping and scheduling them could be a mammoth and unpleasant task, but after four years the Northern Voice planning committee seems to have arrived at a pretty good formula: block off the whole day, ingest a dangerous amount of caffeine, fight for your favorites (but do it nicely), keep the wisecracks coming, and go for a tasty meal when we’re done — our growling stomachs are effectively a whip cracking over our heads by mid-afternoon.
This year was notable as Darren and Julie were participating from Malta. The plasma screen at UBC’s Telestudios enabled us to make some pretty slick use of Google Docs as a collaboration tool (Boris was especially adept), and Skype allowed Darren to listen and chip in with his sarcastic good sense via a text window.
The schedule will be posted very soon. I can say that it is a very promising set of sessions, and that the educational community will be represented in full perverse force.
As ever, I am grateful for every opportunity to work with this committee — the chance to spend focused time with such gifted, personable and most amusing people is not something I take for granted. I wish every working day was this productive and this much fun.
[Previous obligatory planning day posts here.]