ISTE 2010 Keynote Address

I read the following blog post by Ann Leaness titled "Backchannel or Baschannel" about the Opening Keynote address by Jean-François Rischard. Ann provided a very nice look at her thoughts concerning the keynote which has generated some interesting comments. Some that were critical of those who were tweeting during the keynote. Here was my comment to the post:

As one who was at the Blogger’s Cafe and on Twitter, reading mostly, during the presentation, I think that many of us were expecting something else. You did a nice job of being kind to Mr. Rischard and his presentation to the ISTE 2010 crowd.

Having seen several ISTE, and other Keynotes, that have been fantastic, I feel this presentation missed the mark, and the audience. Sure we are a group of educators and technology geeks who have come to expect more, especially when we attend a conference with the prestige of ISTE.

My thoughts during the presentation was this, who the heck at ISTE booked Mr. Rischard to deliver the opening keynote address? With the extensive vetting process given to presenters and everything else at ISTE what happened? A good keynote address should set the tone for a conference, energize and inspire conference goers. This was not the case.

I do take serious issue with Mr. Rischard’s One World Government world view and some of the suggestions he made. Only in the last 10 minutes or so of his presentation did he attempt to try to tie his presentation to education.

As to the nature of the tweets themselves, I see nothing wrong by expressing your ideas, even if sometimes they are negatively directed at something, as some others have commented upon here.

I think this presentation would have be better received from another audience rather than a group of fantastic technology educators in the United States who were looking for a big bang to kick of their ITSE 2010 experience.