Top Artists and number of plays.

1. Madness (240)
2. Screaming Females (213)
3. James (168)
4. Pulp (154)
5. Green Day (149)
6. Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra (145)
7. The Replacements (124)
8. R.E.M. (118)
9. Neon Trees (111)
10. Florence + The Machine (100)

Top Songs and number of plays (with a few ties).

1. Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra – Do It with a Rockstar (23)
2. Pulp – Common People (21)
3. Of Monsters and Men – Little Talks (20)
3. Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra – Want It Back (20)
5. Grimes – Genesis (19)
6. Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra – The Killing Type (17)
7. Beach House – Myth (16)
7. Gypsy & The Cat – Bloom (16)
9. Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra – Trout Heart Replica (15)
10. Django Django – Default (14)
10. Neon Trees – Animal (14)
10. M83 – Midnight City (14)
10. The Vaccines – Teenage Icon (14)
10. Dum Dum Girls – Lord Knows (14)

For the complete details on my music for the past year, see my Last.fm profile.

In August, I was in Boston for #satechBOS. These are the badges I earned on that trip.

Then just last week I was in Denver for the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. And I  gained more badges.

You may recognize these badges from Foursquare and Untappd, so they aren’t really related to the primary purpose of these trips. But what if conferences started awarding their own badges for specific accomplishments? Would that make attending the conference more fun? Would you learn more, or at least be encouraged to try new things? I attended SXSW in 2011 and earned different Foursquare badges based on the types and number of sessions I attended. I’d like to see a large conference work with the Mozilla Open Badges project to give this a try. You could earn badges by attending a given number of sessions in each track, by attending a total number of sessions, by attending multiple years, or by any number of ways. That would be a conference worth attending.

I spent four days in Denver last week at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. This was the eighth straight year I’ve attended this conference and I’ve learned quite a bit from each one. In my first few conferences, I attended a lot of sessions while, for the past two, I’ve spent most of my time in the exhibit hall talking to vendors about products we currently use, those we may use, and others that are quite cool but we wouldn’t necessarily use in Student Affairs.

We left Raleigh-Durham airport on Tuesday morning and arrived in Denver just after 11:00. Thank you, Southwest Airlines for the direct flight between RDU and DEN. We even had a slightly late departure from RDU, but still made Denver on time. I can only assume that our pilot broke some speed limit along the way to make up time.

After checking in to our hotel and finding some lunch, we had touring to do before the conference events started. Our first stop was at Great Divide Brewing where we tried some of their beer and got the tour of the brewery.After Great Divide, we had to visit the Falling Rock Tap House.

With over 75 beers on tap, it’s another great place to visit in Denver if you would like to try some of the local beer.

The full conference started on Wednesday morning with the keynote from Clay Shirky. EDUCAUSE always has great speakers for the keynote. In previous years we’ve heard from Jim Collins, Lawrence Lessig, Seth Godin, danah boyd, and Doris Kearns Goodwin. This year didn’t disappoint either. I’d seen a few of Shirky’s talks online, so the content of his talk really wasn’t anything new to me. I guess it would have been too much to expect that he’d have some new research or theory to present for us. Regardless, his talk was entertaining and informative. I learned that after the printing press was invented around 1440, erotic novels were printed by 1499 while it took until 1665 for the first academic journal to be printed. You can watch all of Shirky’s talk at the EDUCAUSE website to find out how this bit of trivia is relevant.

After the opening keynote, I did attend a couple of sessions in the morning. Over the past couple of years, I’ve found that I don’t really get a lot from most conference sessions and these two again failed to live up to their promise. I won’t point them out by name, but here’s the general issue I have with many sessions. First, they are too general. The information presented is mostly common knowledge to anyone who has been working in the field for more than a couple of years. These may be great for regional conferences, or those targeted for new professionals, but the content isn’t deep enough for an annual conference audience. Second, there are too many presentations that just talk about the steps that were taken to implement a new service or institute some change and fail to do any assessment of the project or to talk about what was learned. Where’s the answer to the “so what?” question.

After lunch, it was time to explore the exhibit hall and talk to some of the vendors we work with in Student Affairs.

We had a nice long talk with our event management vendor about how their product is being used on campus, then saw some demonstrations of new software from another vendor we are using for a number of systems within the division. All of this went fairly well, and was much more informative than the morning sessions that I attended.

Later in the day, I attended the first meeting of the Student Affairs IT constituent group. This is a new group for EDUCAUSE, and I hope we can use it to bring more attention to the specific needs of Student Affairs. As Student Affairs offices across the country implement more systems, we are moving away from providing local services into supporting campus-wide systems. This is a significant change that requires support from Student Affairs leadership, central IT organizations, national organizations, and the vendors who provide the systems. The rapid growth over the past few years is just the beginning. There is the potential for growth in all areas of campus that are not directly classroom related. In Student Affairs organizations across the country, we manage systems for housing, dining, health services, student conduct, career services, event management, and many more. The complexity of these systems will require additional skills and resources within Student Affairs departments, and organizations such as EDUCAUSE can be effective for advocating for these changes.

Wednesday night was a big night for vendor events. We attended the event at Wynkoop Brewing Company. Besides the good food and great beer, the highlight of the evening was the tour of the brewery, led by one of the brewers. This guy really enjoyed his job and was excited about the Wynkoop beer and all craft beer in general. He gave us a lot of historical background information as well as some great insights into brewing their beer. We even got to sample some of their barley, and beer, at the end of the tour. I recommend the Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout. What’s amazing about this brewery is how they can their beer. It’s still done by hand, two at a time. This is probably why you don’t get this beer outside of the Denver area.

Thursday started off with a visit to the Four Winds Interactive headquarters in Denver. This company provides digital signage solutions to a number of universities, so when they offered a tour of their offices, I accepted. Their offices are located in an old warehouse building in a part of Denver that’s undergoing revitalization so it reminded me a lot of the American Tobacco Campus and Durham. I spent an hour at Four Winds and was quite impressed with the many ways that digital signage can be used throughout a campus.

After returning to the convention center on Thursday, I spent the rest of the day talking to more vendors. Trust me, there were plenty of them to talk to and they all had the best product in their market space. I know because that’s what they all told me. But seriously, I looked at all kinds of stuff. I talked to people about furniture that could be used in student centers and offices to promote creativity and collaboration. I looked at solutions for event scheduling, including some cool features that allow people to book open rooms from interactive signs just outside the space. I also took a look at new hardware and software from some of the major vendors such as Dell, Microsoft, and Google. And finished up the day with a demonstration of WebEx Social from Cisco.

Thursday night didn’t seem to be so big on vendor events. Maybe they were looking for the traditional EDUCAUSE event that didn’t happen this year as well. I heard that didn’t take place this year because most people didn’t attend. I’m not sure if this is true, but I attended almost every one of these events in my eight years of this conference. I thought the one last year in Philadelphia was quite enjoyable. So without a major event to attend on Thursday, a small group met up with the help of some Twitter organizing and headed off to dinner. After dinner, I ran into a few other people and we ended the evening at the Yard House. The sign on the door read, “Largest Selection of Draft Beer in the World” so how could I not go there?

After the long nights on Wednesday and Thursday, getting up for that 8:00 session on Friday morning isn’t always easy. But I’m glad I did because the session I attended was one of the best ones I’ve ever attended, outside of a keynote. The session was titled “Some People Visit the Web, Some People Live There: The Effect of Online Residency on Digital Literacies” The research for this topic started as a rebuttal to Marc Prensky’s Digital Immigrant vs. Digital Native argument  That’s one that I’ve always had an issue with, so this talk was great to hear. The basic idea is to analyze web use based on a spectrum that ranges from Visitors to Residents. Just watch this video to learn more about the concept.

Because of the digital immigrant vs. digital native discussion, and others like it we’ve mistakenly assumed that today’s students are experts at everything related to technology. This would not be correct, and David White explained the problem of this view when he said “We’ve lost a decade where we wrongly assumed that students who were good with technology were also good at using technology to learn.”

We even had some time during this session to develop our own personal mapping of how we use the internet to communicate and engage. I think this would be a great exercise to take back to campus to map out how we are using these within Student Affairs. It would be interesting to see the comparisons between how we intended to use them and how they are actually being used.

And finally, the conference closed out with the final general session of the event. Edward Ayers, President of the University of Richmond spoke on Discovery in a Digital World. Ayers is a historian who has done extensive work to digitize his research. You can also watch his talk on the EDUCAUSE website to hear about some of the really cool things he is doing with historical research and maps. He made a number of excellent points during his talk, but one that struck me was his belief that the problem isn’t that technology is being used in education, especially the humanities, but that we are using too few of its capabilities.

With the conference over, we killed a couple of hours before leaving for the airport by enjoying one final meal in Denver and visiting Colorado’s capital building.Then the very long drive to the airport (why is that airport so far from anything?) and another direct flight from Denver to Raleigh-Durham.

Oh, and one last word. MOOC!

Day 2 featured the first of the Raleigh City Plaza shows, with The Jesus and Mary Chain headlining the night. The first, and only previous time, I saw The Jesus and Mary Chain was in 1990 at the Boathouse in Norfolk, VA. I paid a whole $9.00 to see them with Nine Inch Nails.

But before The Jesus and Mary Chain took the stage, I got to see two other bands. First was Zammuto, followed by Built to Spill.

Finally, it was time for The Jesus and Mary Chain and they did not disappoint. I have one picture as well as a short video clip of their song “Head On.”

The shows were just beginning in all of the other Hopscotch venues when the City Plaza show ended. I left City Plaza and headed to Slim’s to take in a few songs from a veteran punk band, Pipe.

Then it was off to the Lincoln Theatre again to catch the last half of Odonis Odonis.

After Odonis Odonis, Zola Jesus took the stage at Lincoln Theatre. The entire front row was full of photographers. I didn’t see this many photographers at any other show.

I only stayed for about half of Zola Jesus, even though she was very good. I was hoping to catch most of The dB’s show at the Long View Center. They started a bit late, so I made it in time for the start of their set. I was a fan of The dB’s years ago and I never got a chance to see them. While they weren’t bad, I think I should have stayed with Zola Jesus to end my year at Hopscotch.

So there you have it – my two days and nights at the Hopscotch Music Festival. I’m already looking forward to next year.

I started the day volunteering at badge city, scanning tickets and handing out wristbands for the festival. Six hours of work in exchange for an all-show pass. Not a bad exchange.

Once that was done, it was time for some music. On my way to the first venue, I ran across this awesome street art.

I started at King’s Barcade with Lilac Shadows. Something nice and easy to get the night started.

I tried to get to Berkeley Cafe next to see Gross Ghost, but the venue is small and the lines were too long. I’d never get inside in time to see them, so I made my way over to Memorial Auditorium and caught a few songs from Deerhoof.

The one band that I couldn’t miss, Screaming Females, was almost next, so I got over to Lincoln Theatre in plenty of time to get in before they started. Since I got there early, I saw most of Altos as well.

Once Altos was done, it was time for Screaming Females. Best show of Hopscotch. Yes, I know it’s only the first day but it’s going to be hard to beat this one. Enjoy a few pictures and a short video clip from this show.

Finally, I moved back to Memorial Auditorium to catch the last half of the Liars show.

So that was day one. Now I have to run and plan for day two….

First, Jodie Brunstetter, the wife of North Carolina state Sen. Peter Brunstetter.

And then, Sean Harris, a North Carolina pastor who encourages parents to hit the gay out of their kids.

Now that you’ve heard what the supporters have to say, get out and vote NO on Amendment 1.

This week was busy, but not as productive as I’d like it to be. By the end of the day yesterday, I had reached my limit. I started the day with a list of things that needed done. Shortly after the morning coffee, I left for the first of five meetings. At the end of the day, nothing was accomplished and that list of things to do just grew longer. It’s funny that “attend meeting” wasn’t one of the items on that list but that’s what I did anyway.

To make matters worse, the meetings were mostly pointless. One meeting flowed right from a thirty minute recap of previous meetings to a planning session for future meetings. Nothing was accomplished and we were no closer to making decisions than when we had started. We like to joke about how many pointless meetings we attend, but it’s time to start taking action to put an end to this waste of time and resources.

This is where my new three-eleven rule was born (Don’t confuse this with the band). Starting today, no one in my office is allowed to attend more than three meetings in any one day and no more than eleven meetings per week.

It’s an experiment so we’ll see how this goes. The point isn’t to avoid meetings. The point is to be more thoughtful when scheduling and attending meetings so that only productive meetings end up on my calendar. What a productive meeting actually looks like is up for debate, but I’ve attended enough to have a pretty good idea. Maybe if this experiment is successful, I’ll post some of my ideas about good meetings. But for now, I’ll work on sticking to my #threeeleven rule.

Last month (yes, it has taken me this long to post. don’t judge) we took a trip to Sumter, SC for the Kookaburra soccer tournament. The weather was great on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, it rained. Then it rained more and more. Just miserable. But we did have some great music for the wet drive home.

(Post updated to include this fancy new Spotify playlist)

Better Than Ezra Good
(staring off with something slightly classic with a simple, yet effective, bassline)

Screaming Females – It All Means Nothing
(new song from one of my favorite bands. the slightly disturbing video makes it all the better.)

When In Rome – The Promise
(an underrated song from way back in the day)

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Bottled In Cork
(Ted Leo was in town this weekend and I wasn’t, so we had to include at least one song.)

The Correspondents – Cheating with You
(a little something new for you)

Translator – Everywhere that I’m Not
(don’t ask why, but I got on this Translator kick last month)

The Specials – Ghost Town
(this one just never gets old)

Eleanor Friedberger – My Mistakes
(supporting the local record label)

Kelly Clarkson – Stronger
(the girl’s one request – feel free to judge)

Bow Wow Wow – I Want Candy
(i try to introduce the kids to some of the classics – especially following the Kelly Clarkson song. and this is a great example of 80s videos)

Neon Trees – Sins of My Youth
(a request from the boy. i think he has better taste in music than the girl at this point)

Imperial Teen – Runaway
(again with the local record label. you really can’t go wrong with Merge Records.)

Superchunk – Say My Name
(again with the local bands. there’s something going on here.)

The Joy Formidable – Whirring
(i like the name)

Atomic Tom – Take Me Out
(cool video using iPhones as instruments since the band’s real instruments were stolen)

The dB’s – Molly Says
(this can’t be that obscure. i couldn’t find a video, so you’ll have to live with this sample clip from Amazon.)

Siouxsie & the Banshees – Peek-A-Boo
(another great 1980s video)

Jeff The Brotherhood – Mellow Out
(and moving forward a few decades from the last song, here are two simple guys who make a lot of noise)

Andrés Cantor – Goal
(it was a soccer tournament CD after all)

And, as always, if you are using Spotify here’s the playlist.

What I can tell you about is yet another outstanding mix CD. With all the other drama around the upcoming trip, I had forgotten about making the traditional mix CD for the drive. Luckily, The Girl reminded me last Tuesday so I had plenty of time to gather some songs and burn a CD.

I never really know how the CD will turn out, or how well it will be received by the other occupants of the car until we listen to it at least twice. I think this one turned out quite well, so I’ll share it with the world (or both of you who read this).

Pulp – Common People
(I’m not always a fan of videos, but I really like this one)

Trent Reznor – Immigrant Song
(From “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”)

Florrie – She Always Gets What She Wants
(Found her thanks to the cool blog at Hello Giggles)

Imelda May – Mayhem
(First heard at Tyler’s Taproom in Apex a few weeks ago. Used the Soundhound app to find the song.)

Neon Trees – Everybody Talks
(A new single from Neon Trees)

The Submarines – Your Silent Face
(Cool band, pretty good cover of a great New Order song)

Young the Giant – My Body
(Gotta thank Pandora for this one)

Jason Walker – Down

A Fine Frenzy – Almost Lover

My Chemical Romance – Welcome To The Black Parade

Christina Perri – jar of hearts
(the last four were requests from the family, so I don’t have anything to add)

Dum Dum Girls – Wrong Feels Right
(I linked to MySpace – I’m not sure I’ve ever done that before)

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass
(Rube Goldberg – nothing else to say)

Matt & Kim – Cameras
(Saw them last year. Lots of fun.)

Girls – Vomit
(How can you go wrong with a song named “Vomit?”

The Thermals – I Don’t Believe You
(All their songs are awesome, so it was hard to pick just one. I failed because this song was on an earlier road trip CD.)

Inspiral Carpets – This Is How It Feels
(A classic, for what it’s worth.)

The Vaccines – If You Wanna
(Another band found by Pandora – thanks again.)

Dom – Living In America
(Not to be confused with Kids in America.)

Men At Work – Be Good Johnny
(How can I refuse this oldie?)

The Dollyrots – Love You Most
(Another band that looks like a lot of fun to see live. When are they coming to my town?)

And if you are fortunate enough to be using Spotify for some of your music listening pleasure, feel free to subscribe to the entire playlist so you can enjoy it For. Ev. Er.

Oh, you may still be wondering why it’s called “The Pig CD.” Well, the CD-R is used was pig-colored pink. After I labeled the CD with the marker, I put a couple of dots for eyes on the disc. It instantly looked like a pig. So, there you go.