IBEA Conference

I had first heard about this conference from another student at my college. He invited me to go along with him. I thought it would be a great experience to attend the Illinois Business Education Association's annual conference. I was lucky enough to have already attended a teacher conference before. My brother presented at a conference last year and he snuck me in. As a result, I was constantly comparing the IBEA conference to the one I went to last year. I have to say, IBEA didn't stack up well at all.

It took us forever to get down to Effingham from Chicagoland. From car trouble to rain to fog, it was all a bad omen for things to come. The conference started off poorly for me as the first presentation I went to ended up being nothing like the description in the booklet. The presenters broke every rule of PowerPoint presentations, which might be ok elsewhere, but not in a room full of business educators who teach proper presentation etiquette (i.e not reading directly off the screen). Most of the presentations I attended were this way. I felt bad constantly telling Jon how the conference I went to last year was so much better. The food for dinner Thursday night was really bad. It was a Jimmy Buffet theme, so I understood why we we served cheeseburgers, but they were not edible in the least. At least they gave us plenty of drink tickets. Friday, I did manage to see a worthwhile presentation about Microsoft Expression Studio. It sounds very promising and something I want to investigate further. The last session I went to was for new professionals. It was supposed to be more like a round-table discussion, but it ended up mainly being the four presenters providing us with tips and advice.

The other main reason why I wanted to go was the networking opportunities. The problem with going to the conference with someone is that you don;t really talk to anyone else. We ended up having dinner with some other Young teachers from downstate. So were all very nice, but I don't see any networking opportunities resulting from it. However, I was definitely glad that In had Jon there to commiserate with.

I am thinking about attending the NBEA conference because it will be here in Chicago. I just hope it won't be like the IBEA conference.