A great day, beginning with the speakers’ breakfast, extending into an intensely inspiring opening session with Doris Kearns Goodwin (I read her Team of Rivals this summer–can’t recommend this book too highly), a great meeting devoted to online learning, at least two wonderful conversations in the afternoon … such a feast.

But aside from Goodwin, whose talk was really sui generis, the two high points today were Brian Hawkins’ valedictory address, “How I Learned To Drive,” and my dinner with my Frye 2005 colleagues this evening. Brian’s talk deserves a post of its own, and it will get it, too. But before I go to sleep tonight I’m driven to try to say something about this evening’s dinner. I’m tired and I won’t get this exactly right, but I want to blog it in the moment to see if the “iron-fresh odor of discovery” will emerge despite my fatigue.

My account begins and ends with a comment left by a Frye colleague on a blog post dated Thursday, June 16, 2005. This simple act has touched my heart in ways I cannot begin to describe. In this moment the long tail, the remembrance of things past, and the knowledge of a community still vital and essential, all combine to help me find what I never lost.

I know these words will be cryptic to some of my readers, and I am sorry for that, though I think that the 2005 blog post gives enough context for most to understand at least something of what I’m saying. Or trying to say. What I mean is that I’d forgotten I wrote that post, largely because I had a hard time dealing with the way in which that moment of utter clarity I had over two years ago, a clarity I have felt only a few times in my life, seemed to have turned to murk.

But of course it had not. Now I see that my own merciful former self wanted to tell me something tonight. Writing in that moment two years ago, that self committed its moment of clarity to me. And I could honor that commitment only when a colleague, a fellow time-traveler with the marvelous gift of encouragement, wrote a comment recalling this moment and looking out to the next ones.

The imperative was never clearer. Remember this. But to hear myself speak, I needed my gifted colleague.

One comment, one moment, one timely memorial. Thank you, Helen.

My fifth EDUCAUSE conference. Hard to believe. Anaheim, Denver, Orlando, Dallas, and now Seattle. Each year I’ve met extraordinary people and learned a ton.

This year is particularly poignant for me.

I’m on the program committee, which has given me the opportunity to see the event emerge from the ground up, and to work with creative, devoted colleagues to help make that happen. As this year’s EDUCAUSE unfolds, I have an even greater appreciation for all the work that goes into this event, especially all the ingenuity and dedication represented by the folks who are presenting.

I’ll be reconnecting with many of those extraordinary people I mentioned above, and renewing my own excitement and commitment to what I believe is our best hope for genuine educational transformation.

I’ll have dinner with many of my friends from Frye 2005, and draw encouragment, strength, and inspiration from that most marvelous cohort.

At the ELI Advisory Board meeting, I’ll have the chance to review this year’s accomplishments and contribute to the direction of this wonderful group as we move forward into our next phase (see below).

And I’ll have the chance to discuss the topic of “Millenial Faculty” with a small group of conference participants. Since 1990, when I first starting using these technologies as a college instructor, I’ve been hearing about how a generational change will bring the professoriate out of techno-reluctance into techno-fluency, and usher in a new age of IT integration into teaching and learning. Well, the “Space Invaders” generation has their Ph.D.’s and they’re applying for jobs. Has that shift occurred? If so, what are the ramifications of this change?

But the most poignant element of EDUCAUSE 2007, for me, will be a changing of the guard. Brian Hawkins is stepping down as President of EDUCAUSE after ten years of outstanding leadership. And Diana Oblinger, who has brought ELI through three amazing years of growth and innovation, is here for the last time as Vice-President, for she will become the new President of EDUCAUSE on January 1, 2008. Both Brian and Diana are extraordinary leaders. They are also exceptional mentors. It’s difficult for me to express my gratitude to both of them without leaking all over my keyboard and shorting something out. Suffice it to say that I try to channel them in everything I do as a leader and community-builder. I will always be their student.

I’ve been in many learning communities over the course of my career. The dream of a university, a place in which diversity and unity find a common purpose and, even more importantly, a common joy, has come true for me in a variety of ways, from those magic days in which a class meeting takes off for the stratosphere to those days when a conference presentation or even a chance conversation with a colleague propels my own learning into a higher orbit. To my great astonishment, however, it was not until 2003 that I began to see how all these many processes in higher education might be aligned, might realize the synergies that our civilization so desperately needs if we are to address our challenges successfully. If any proof is needed that information technologies are really civilization technologies, as fundamental and as exciting as reading and writing themselves, that proof is here at EDUCAUSE, in abundance.

I wish I’d found this community ten years ago. I’m very grateful and honored to be part of it now.

Just back from a driving marathon to take our son to Hampshire College for a College Day visit. Aside from a 2.5 hour wait to cross the Geo. Wash. Bridge northbound on Sunday, one brief lost moment in the Bronx (missed the southbound turn to the Geo. Wash. Bridge), and a lovely rear-ender when a small truck piled into us as we were trying to leave Hadley (no one was hurt, thank goodness), it was uneventful.

Both Ian and I were impressed by Hampshire, for a number of reasons I would like to explore here at some point. We also both had some concerns, I more than he. Worth exploring those too, particularly because, so far as I can tell, Hampshire was founded on a very brave, far-seeing attempt at real school. The attempt continues, forty years later, and it was interesting to see some of the history of that attempt firsthand.

Then we got home, and a brochure had come from Deep Springs College–another of the brave real school attempts I’ve thought about over the years. I remember getting a version of that brochure when I was a senior. I had tried out for the Telluride Program and failed. (I was a semi-finalist and got an interview with Robert Davidoff, a young asst. prof. of history at UVA; it was the first time I’d talked at length to a college professor–and thereby hangs another tale.) Still, Deep Springs was fascinating to me, for reasons I have trouble explaining, even to myself. The current brochure is even more interesting than the one I received thirty-three years ago.

All of which brings me to today’s punch line, which has something to do with the pleasures and perils of growing up as a faculty kid. At least waggish Ian, who wrote and posted this note on a door in our house, has still managed to get to the comic side of all these questions.