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A Meeting of Minds

Campus Technology 2013 celebrates 20 years of sharing ideas with friends and colleagues.

• By Rhea Kelly
• 07/29/13

Behind the scenes at Campus Technology, we are a highly decentralized staff. Our conference operations are managed from Texas; event programming comes from Florida and Northern California; art, production, and marketing are housed in Southern California; our salespeople work tirelessly from Maine, Illinois, Massachusetts, Colorado, and California; and our editorial team hails from New York, Virginia, and California. We don't often get to see each other in person.

So our summer conference has always been something of a family reunion. After hours, we eat and drink together, share photos of our kids, talk about movies we've seen, and come up with new ideas for future conferences and magazine articles. It's a melding of work and pleasure that I truly look forward to each year.

But perhaps the best part of traveling to our Boston conference is being able to meet our readers face-to-face. Whether I'm joining a lunchtime discussion, attending a session, or listening to an inspiring keynote, you all are a constant source of ideas and insights. There's no better place to learn what's on the minds of technology professionals in higher education. Indeed, one of my favorite activities is to man the Campus Technology booth in the exhibit hall, where many of you stop by to offer compliments, criticisms, and thanks. If you're passionate about a technology, trend, or idea that we haven't covered in CT, come tell me about it!

As we celebrate the 20-year anniversary of our conference, it's worth looking back on some of the ideas and observations that have been shared here. Back in 1997, for example, when Judith Boettcher, then director of distance learning at Florida State University, predicted a "proliferation of choices" in online learning, could she have foreseen the MOOC phenomenon? And computer scientist Jaron Lanier's 2000 observation that students might "transform their own learning experiences without the traditional supervision of educators" reverberates in the DIY education movement a decade later. We've compiled a timeline of fascinating quotes from these visionaries and more in "Score! 20 Years of Big Ideas."

This month we also honor our 2013 Campus Technology Innovators: nine institutions that implemented creative tech solutions to a variety of campus challenges. Not only can you read their stories in our Innovators special feature, but you can also meet many of them in person at our conference. Look for them at the Innovators awards presentation and at the Innovators poster session in the exhibit hall. They are sure to have some interesting ideas to share.