Now that the EMU English Department conference is wrapped up, it’s on to my next task of this busy semester, getting my presentation ready for the CCCCs in New York in two weeks. My talk is called “Content Management Systems and Writing Program Administration: When Your Website is Not Something You Have, But Something You Are.” The bad news is that I’m presenting on Saturday morning; the good news is that I’m presenting at all because the only reason I’m on the program is because I asked if there was any way for the powers that be at the CCCCs to reconsider my proposal. They did and I’m on.
The other piece of bad news: I found out yesterday that the “technology” I will have access to at the conference will be limited to an overhead. If I want an LCD projector it’d come out of my own pocket, and if I wanted internet access (God forbid!), it cost me over $800. For just my session.
First off, I think one of the reasons that my tech access is so meager (and why I had a hard time getting on the program in the first place) is because I submitted this proposal not in the “Information Technology” cluster but in the “Theory” cluster. I did this because I see my presentation about ident(ities) more than about computer things, though, as the title perhaps suggests, I suppose it is about both. In any event, I guess folks in the “Theory” cluster don’t need any of that stinkin’ technology….
I briefly considered trying to borrow a projector from school to take with me, but I don’t think I want to be responsible for it (e.g., what if it breaks, what if it gets stolen, lugging the thing around, etc., etc.), and I’m not sure the powers that be at EMU would let me take it anyway. So while I’ve come to rely on somewhat elaborate PowerPoint (and now Keynote) presentations for conference talks like this, I guess I’ll have to figure out how to go back to “old school” with transparencies.
It’ll give me a chance to figure out how to print on the damn things again….
Well, Steve, on the bright side, you can thank the CCCC for helping you and your audience remain true to Shutdown Day.
Ugh. When you told me recently you had an overhead, I immediately thought overhead LCD projector. I never realized you meant overhead transparency projector.
Of course, that’s where we should be now with technology at our conferences, able to assume that there is only one kind of way of projecting things on the screen–via computer.
CCCC has never been hi-tech. I’ve presented in the IT strand multiple times and had access to overheads only. The unwiredness of the conference is one symptom of NCTE/CCCCs complete ignorance where tech is concerned.
On the plus side, Cs is generally free of terrible PowerPoint, or worse yet, folks reading awful Ppt.