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Old 06-29-2009, 10:36 PM
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NECC Conference
June 29, 2009 —

Last night, the formal portion of the NECC Conference kicked off in the ballroom at the Washington Conference Centre. The keynote address was given by Malcolm Gladwell. I had been waiting for some time in anticipation of this presentation.

As a presenter, I’ve often wondered how you prepare and deliver a keynote to an audience this size. There were thousands of us in the the ballroom, there was an overflow room, the Twitterverse was alive, and the presentation is being covered via a live blog. So, every nuance in your presentation will be covered and will be commented on within seconds of it happening.

So, what is the message that you deliver to such an audience? We’re all sitting in the audience, all armed with our SMART pointers, chomping at the bit ready to be motivated.

The presentation was delivered in story telling format. Alone on the stage, with a handful of notes, Mr. Gladwell gave reference to the success of Fleetwood Mac and The Beatles. In so doing, he draws in his “10,000 hours in order to master” theory. He takes us through the math and it equates to 10 years. Interesting. In context of this audience, I wonder what people were doing with technology 10 years ago. Maybe a walk through the historical exhibit is in order for them. Looking at some of the younger teachers, I wonder if they thought that Fleetwood Mac came before the iMac in the Apple product line!

Obviously, the 10 years analogy just doesn’t cut it when you’re talking about the actual technology. But, let’s forget that we’re not talking about technology; let’s focus on teaching. When do would-be teachers leave the profession? Generally, it’s in the first few years of teaching. How long does it take to get to the top of the pay grid? In our case, it’s 11 years.

The goal of a good keynote speaker should be to leave the audience musing about things with an eye towards change and/or improvement. For me, it boiled down to two points that I have honestly been mulling over in my mind.

The first is that success comes from hard work and not some sort of built-in ability. We keep circling back to Fleetwood Mac and that “Rumours” was not one of their first efforts. It affirms the message that parents and teachers have given us for years. In his speech, Gladwell draws evidence from success on Mathematics tests and IQ tests for football quarterbacks.

The second message is one of confidence. This, I found, particulary interesting. The message was that often confidence outpaces the actual skill. As an example of this, he led us to the recent events with the banking industry. As he’s talking about this, I’m flipping through the comments coming from Twitter on my iPod. There were negative comments flying about the content of the entire speech and I can’t help but think that he’s right on.

The comments, it seems to me, should be thoughtful at first and then embraced or discarded. However, if your confidence is truly exceeding your skills, the kneejerk reaction is to immediately turn off and make derogatory comments. I saw some of that and was disappointed.

The closing was perfect. There’s a panel discussion later in the conference about bricks and mortar. Gladwell beat all of the panelists to the punch with what we know will be the realistic answer to this debate “It doesn’t make a difference where, but how learning takes place.”

It would have been perfect to have us exit the hall for our cupcakes to the sound of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t stop, thinking about tomorrow.”

I am. Gladwell did his job as a keynote – I’m thinking. What more could I ask for?

http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/0...cc-conference/
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