Wrap up - things I forgot to share with you

• So, lets get it out right up front - there are some pictures and stories you will never see or hear about.  Period.

• Blogging can be done on a mobile device. You do not have to lug your laptop with you when traveling. I used my iPhone during the day to capture photos, videos, quotes and ideas. I felt the iPhone was an easy and unobtrusive way to take pictures and video. Using the free Blogger app, I could quickly upload a picture and text to create a post. To add a video to the blog, I had to use the Blogsy app for iPads. Blogsy was highly recommended by many app reviewers ($4.99). So, in the evening, I would take out the iPad to create the posts that included a video. (I did not want to carry the iPad around during the day.)

• If quickly realized I needed to find the balance between gathering information and actually being present at the conference. I could have spent a lot more time editing the pictures and the video - I decided to not edit them. Also, there were a few times when I was so absorbed in my phone posting a comment, that it was dangerous. At one point, someone grabbed my arm and jerked me out of the way of a huge pillar I was about to smack into. Another time I stumbled onto a down escalator without realizing it. I was just following the crowd as I was checking a video I just took. Thanks to my friends who were chaperoning me, I came home in one piece.

• I could not believe all the Jenzabar groupies. I was in the mist of 1600 people, who all LOVED Jenzabar and looked forward to the convention every year. Many people went out of their way to introduce themselves and find out about where I was from. When I would say "Mount Saint Mary College, Newburgh, NY", almost everyone would come back with... "oh, yeah, I know Dave MacLean, Sharon Mankiewicz, or Donna Adams". MSMC is well know and respected at JAM by many Jenzabar executives and a slew of college. I was proud to be part of the MSMC Group at JAM 2013.

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But wait, one more day

Ok, I am tired. It is Saturday morning and I should be home working in my garden. JAM is holding sessions today until noon. I noticed the dining room for breakfast was half full. (My new Jenzabar friends said a record of 1600 people attended this year.) Just two more sessions and we can get out to the pool for a little sunshine (and humidity) before our flight to Stewart.

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Finally Friday

Interesting info from sessions we attended:

• In a future Jenzabar release, they are adding text messaging as one of the options that can be sent from the Notepad. (Currently, we can create letters, emails, and labels from Notepad.)
• Infomaker has a Tree-view option that generates a report that you can drill-down and see the detail if you want. I am going to play with this when I get back to the office and hold a training session on it

Sharon and Barbara hosted a session about managing and controlling data across campus offices. They had a lively, successful session with many attendees relating to the material. They made a lot of connections to other colleges, many who said they wanted to contact them in the future or visit our campus.

BTW: they could not connect at the start of the session. They had to call in the IT guy. "Oh nooooo, what did you do? This is really bad."

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