And each dish is hidden underneath a towel.

And written on the towel is only the broad food group that the meal underneath belongs to: Meat, Grain, Pudding — I’m pretty sure pudding is a food group, no?

And you aren’t really looking at the actual dishes, but a black & white photograph of them. And . . . well, you get the idea.

So when it comes time to actually eat the meal you’ve chosen, sometimes it doesn’t taste quite as you’d envisioned. And this isn’t always a bad thing.

Take the Tuesday afternoon session titled simply Information Classification. The paragraph description promised a tale of how Prince George’s Community College in Maryland undertook the process of classifying and assigning security rights to all data gathered and maintained by the school.

Not quite heart-quickening stuff. But I was intrigued enough by the daunting scope of such a thing to want to hear more. Also I was curious to see how relevant the take-away would be to Thayer’s own data security efforts. So I tucked in . . .

Ajay Gupta, the Director of Security at PGCC, is engaging and funny, and spoke quite eloquently about their mammoth endeavor with a deep grasp on subtle (& not so) implications that are inherent in applying a rational order to chaos and madness.

Amazingly they did it. & he showed the spreadsheet to prove it. Wow. Lots and lots of data records to classify, let me tell you.

But he said something very interesting during the question session. He had talked a lot of the classifying and assigning ownership and abstract access rights, but almost nothing on enforcing the policies. What were the plans and tools in play for this brass-tacks part of the whole affair? Because for me, as primarily technical & support-focused, this was the filling of the pie. Yes, I am very dessert-driven.

His answer was short: “We’re not allowing any data to reside outside of the ERP system.”

I swear I could hear the needle slide off the phonograph.

Oh well. So much for my dessert.

By the way, just what the heck is an ERP system anyway? (Kidding!)

And this was a group of multi-media technologists, demonstrating the Guns N' Roses method of lecture capture:

As you can see this was a popular session. (They apologized for not quite adhering to rules as Axl Rose is technically in Malibu, CA, which is not quite the same as being deceased.)

(Aw you got me! These were actually from the Lenovo-sponsored halloween end-of-conference party at an artificial bar-and-music theme-park midway called Universal CityWalk. The scene was replete with costumed stilt-walkers and stunningly bad celebrity impersonators (except the John Belushi-as-Blues-Brother, who was dead-on). Sadly, it was much to dark too take any more iPhone photos of the event. But who knew education technologists could let loose so?)

(I’ll be picking out a few sessions that particularly stand out to write about in more detail, but I didn’t want anyone to think all I was doing was napping or playing iPhone Labyrinth.)

• Generalized Exhibition Hall wanderings
• Library: REPLAY: An Integrated and Open Solution to Produce, Handle, and
  Distribute Audiovisual Lecture Recordings
• Meeting: EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer & Network Security Task Force (Open
  Meeting)
• Teaching and Learning: Tomorrow’s Students, Today’s K–12 Digital Learners: Are You Ready for Them?
• Teaching and Learning: The Future of Instructional Computing Labs
• Discussion Session: Openness
• Leadership and Management: Breaking Through Technology Barriers: Creating
  an Effective IT Communications Program with a Limited Budget
• General Session: Why IT Matters: A President’s Perspective on Technology
  and Leadership

Anyway, he’s been at EDUCAUSE 08 all this week, too, and writing up his notes in the CC Blog. His posts are consistently attentive and detailed. & obviously the reason I still have yet to meet him is that while I’ve been napping to keep my strength up, Josh has been writingwritingwriting.

Please check his stuff out.

Well, I bet you can guess where Apple stands on that question. They are clearly engaged in a serious push get their multi-touch mobile devices in the hands of as many students, teachers, and staff as possible.

At EDUCAUSE 08 Apple is quite present, which is not unusual, but what is interesting is that every scheduled Apple-run session implicitly (if not blatantly) tries to bootstrap the iPhone into whatever pedagogy is being described. (Am I using bootstrap properly? I dunno, but it sounds good, I think…)

And not only that, it’s as if Apple pulled a semi up to the back door of the conference center and flooded the market on vendor raffle prizes. It’s verging on prize fatigue here.

Oh, so you’re saying if I attend your demo I could win another iPod touch? Because the one I got this morning is a little smudged from sitting in my tote bag…

They’re using them as coasters at the refreshment tables.

Yesterday I attended a session on developing apps for the iPhone. Really it was more of an infomercial on how easy it is to use Dash & X Code with the iPhone hook-ins, but you can’t expect too much for 50 minutes. &, slavish iPhone toadie I am I thought “Why that sounds just perfect for Thayer School!”

& I started planning a suite of apps to access and view data on ThayerFS (there don’t seem to be any real options for editing yet), post on the wiki, pre-order the grille special from Byrne…

But is this fair? Is it reasonable to pile so much brain energy and development into the boat of one vendor, one device? Then I sat on the floor to play another game of Classic Labyrinth & forgot whatever it was I was thinking over…

So, in brief, here’s where I’ve been today:

EDUCAUSE 2008 Summary Itinerary for Matthew Dricker

• General Session: The Unique Human Brain: Clues from Neurology
• Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall – Sponsored by TeamDynamix
• Corporate Workshop: Apple – Developing Native and Web Applications for the iPhone
• Security and Privacy: PGP Whole Disk Encryption Implementation
• Lunch in the Exhibit Hall
• Discussion Session: Distributed Technology Support
• Security and Privacy: Information Classification
• Leadership and Management: Student E-Mail: New Options, New Solutions

Actually I’m stealing time from the last session to write this up.

Ok. Now I’m going back to paying attention to the speaker.

I’ve got lots of observations that I’d like to commit to words, so don’t go far. More to come.

Over and out.