So this last weekend we attended the MWALLT (MidWest Association for Language Learning Technology ) conference in Cleveland. Presentation topics ranged from a review of video conferencing software to the potential language learning opportunities of Second Life. On Saturday we presented Skritter and received valuable feedback not only about the software, but also about our business model. We were invited to do some controlled Beta testing at one or two nearby Universities!
Right now we’re planning to attend both the CALICO and IALLT conferences in March and June 2009 respectively. So in summary, thanks to everyone that attended MWALLT and we look forward to seeing you again over the coming 8 months!
As an aside, we had a pretty humorous encounter getting to Cleveland for the conference. We were driving east on Euclid avenue and we’d just pulled up to a stop light on the Case Western University circle. A construction worker, carrying a large stack of orange cones steps into the intersection amid the traffic and begins to lay them down the right in the center of the intersection. As he’s doing that, he signals a construction pickup truck into the intersection and then has the truck stop, so that the truck is now perpendicularly blocking traffic from our direction. The cone-laying dude just keeps laying down his namesake, seemingly oblivious to confused drivers. At this point we’re all pretty much baffled as to what’s going on.
The light turns green for us, but of course we can’t go anywhere because our lane of traffic is now blocked. The truck driver gets out and looks at us with a “what the heck is this cone-guy doing?” sort of grin. Cone-guy for his part cannot be bothered and intently placing those miniature orange obelisks about the road in a seemingly random pattern. Truck driver gets his attention, but is unable to understand his purpose, so he turns to us smiling awkwardly and instructs us to drive around his vehicle and the cones. As we pass, all of us are laughing uproariously in our car and truck driver smiling, red in the face, looking sort of perplexed. Cone-guy keeps on laying cones, seemingly oblivious to all that has transpired. Jolly good show Cleveland Department of Transportation, jolly good!