Tag: CITE

As some of you may know, I made the jump from K-12 to private-sector consulting in late July. It has been an incredible transition for me and one that I hope will rejuvenate this blog (especially considering how long my last attempt lasted). I do plan to broaden the topics that I talk about, but I will still remember where I came from, especially regarding the very academic world of Learning Analytics. This post can be considered a bit transitionary and is a review of the 2022 CITE Annual Conference in Long Beach.

The 2022 CITE (California Information Technology in Education) conference was a different one for me. For the first time ever, I was attending not as an educational member but as an attendee. It took more than a little adjustment, but I think that I learned as much, and as much that’s immediately relevant to me as I did when I was focused on K-12. It really is amazing how much the CITE team does to focus the conference not simply on technology but on leading in a technological world.

The first thing that I want to do is congratulate the members of CTO Mentor Cohort 16! I hadn’t realized how many of you I knew, and I’m sure that all of you are going to be leaders in CiTE in the coming years. Speaking of CTO Mentor, I had a great time catching up with my own Cohort 15! I continue to recommend this program to anyone in or reaching for a position of senior technology leadership in K-12 education. There’s no better way to acquire a firm grounding in all the different skills a technology leader needs. I know that I use the skills I gained every day, even now that I’ve left K-12.

As for the conference itself, I felt that the content was the best that CITE’s had in years. There was a diverse range of sessions aimed at technologists of all levels. I particularly enjoyed Ben Markley’s improvement science session and Brianne Ford and Erick Steelman’s presentation on board presentations (also great advice for any leadership presentation). I think that IT organizations, in general, are excellent places to leverage improvement science (especially organizations that embrace the Agile mindset), and it is great to see more people talking about it. I think I’ll be adapting some of Ben’s protocols for my own use.

CITE has a history of tremendous keynotes, ranging from Kate the Chemist to Steve Wozniak, and this year was no exception. Danielle Feinberg, the visual effects supervisor from Turning Red, spoke about resiliency in the face of challenges, overcoming adversity, and her own journey from tech, to art, and back. It was a moving speech, marred only by an unexpected interruption of a fire alarm, which Danielle handled perfectly. I regret not being able to attend John Sileo’s keynote, but I heard that it was great as well. Finally, at least on the subject of the general sessions, Antonio Romayor’s MCing of the closing raffle was amazing, and I think that he may have another calling in comedy.

Anytime you attend a conference, especially one for a community as close-knit as the K-12 technology community, the conversations between the sessions are going to be at least as important and enlightening as the sessions themselves, and this year at CITE was no exception. I’ve been thinking a lot about data strategy, data leadership, and data governance lately, and especially how they intersect with technology and organizational leadership. In addition to talking about my new chapter, several conversations really helped me focus on these ideas and realize that over the next few years, we’re going to be meeting an inflection point with data strategy and data governance. They aren’t going to be “nice to haves” anymore. The reason for this is that citizen and self-service analytics tools are being released at a remarkable pace, and they’ve reached the point that anyone can be a data analyst, so we (as technology leaders) are going to have to accept and support that, rather than attempting to hold back the tide with a bucket.

Of course, no conference review would be complete without mentioning swag, and here again CITE has been ahead of the trend toward less swag and – for lack of a better phrase – better swag. The conference bag was minimal but reusable (as it has been for the last several years, a small “grocery” type bag), and the “conference swag item” was a very nice heavy-duty laptop sleeve that I can see myself using. As for the vendors, some have really upped their game, with INVZBL having what is probably the best piece of swag that I’ve ever seen and something guaranteed to be either used or passed on to someone else. It was a combination hand sanitizer bottle and dog bag dispenser, with the clip being strong enough to survive on a leash!