Tweet-up at Harrogate iatefl 2010

With family committments taking over huge amounts of time in my life over the last eight weeks I was not at all sure that I was going to get to the tweet-up at iatefl in Harrogate. However, as things worked out I managed to leave home on Friday lunchtime and arrived in Harrogate in time for the start of the Pecha Kucha – watch it at http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-09/iatefl-3rd-annual-pecha-kucha-evening it is well worth seeing :-)

Not being a language teacher maybe I do not appreciate the finer nuances of humour when very famous language educators are mentioned but still found something interesting, inspiring or just entertaining in all of the talks. Marisa, Burcu and Karenne all did Pecha Kucha presentations which were brilliant but Gavin Dudeney’s "A Personal Reading List" it is just the funniest session imaginable! I have to treat him to the "Is your dog gay?" book from his wish list on the strength of it! This particular book rang a bell with me because my sons, when young teens, always called one dog that we had "Gayboy," I was never brave enough to ask why :-)They clearly recognised something I missed!

I was delighted to meet, for the first time face to face, many of the people that I have talked to frequently over the last year in Second Life, or been in contact with through Twitter. I met up with Marisa, Karenne and Shelly and stayed with them overnight sleeping on the sofa in their flat – thanks ladies! I had a wonderful time. We sat quite happily talking the night away, though deciding at about 4am we really should get a little sleep ;-)

At the tweet-up I met Olga, Maureen, Jeremy, Jeremy’s musician friend (sorry his name has gone), Ken, Amanda, Petra, Burcu, Anna, Sue Lyons, Shaun, Kalyan and Tamas possibly even more people, I am sorry if I have left you out!! As more names and faces come to me I will add to the list.

It was great to meet up again with those I had met before including Gavin and Nicky, Graham, Kyle and Joe, Jessie and Iffaf – again probably loads more of you. Thanks again to everyone for making me so welcome, I am so glad I managed to get there.

From home, via the iatefl Livestream, I had already watched the Thursday and Friday Plenaries and lots of the interviews from the presenters at the conference, I know they are directed at language teachers but so much of the session content and inspiration is transferable, it does not really matter what you are teaching! I still have more to catch up with, it is going to take about a month to get through it all – see all of it here: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/. Many thanks to all involved in making it such as huge success and so much of it accessible to those of us who were not present. Massive thanks and credit to the team who made the on-line conference happen so fluently and smoothly. The quality was superb. The Sunday plenary, Jan Blake telling her wonderful stories, was an amazing conclusion to the whole event. I really hope that is available on video to rewatch!

I have three short video clips from the tweet-up that I would like to edit into a sharable clip – I will see if I can contain it to the people that I recognise and see if they agree to it being shared! Watch this space :-)