Edinburgh Coffee Morning or TeachMeet?

This morning there was no Mike, sick at home, but Edinburgh Coffee Morning attracted a new bunch of folk fresh in from the school hols. Closer to a TeachMeet than a regular Ed Coff Morn; you can see for yourself.

Former teacher and now foodblogger journo-turned-social-media-trainer Graham Holliday a.k.a. Noodlepie had come all the way from Toulouse, France, for coffee with us (apparently there was something to do with his family, too ;-). He's going to start whetting our appetites on the Guardian Food Blog soon, and we were swapping tales of woe in the social media training world - give people what they want, or show them something they didn't know about yet?

It was good to catch up with Mark of Coffee Break Spanish fame, and sad to see that Partners in Excellence is now offline until someone somewhere hopefully bangs up some kind of legacy. I was saying how, at the mention of Coffee Break Spanish in Boston there were several nods of recognition: international media moguldom gets closer. Even Jamie subscribes and had a momentary swoon in front of the stardom that beheld him. Most weird event of Coffee Morning goes to Mark, who discovered that MacBooks attract Centotre cutlery, pictured.

Jamie himself gave me a demo of the coolness in the Ubuntu open source operating system (my dodgy MacBook camera filming also available on Google Video). Ubuntu almost makes it worthwhile buying a PC; maybe only a matter of time before the multiple desktop switching he showed me hits your Mac ;-)

Alan, guitar impresario from East Lothian, was fascinated by the possibilities of the latest breed of iPod mics for recording guitar ensembles. Also from East Lothian, it was good to catch up with colleague and WPMU partner in crime David G. We've got a sexy new homepage hitting our schools this autumn term and we were looking at how many great images from around East Lothian there are to illustrate it. We'll need more, with permissions, but with the new blanket sending out of our wiki-ed forms that shouldn't be so hard now. After the amazing reactions and discussion on the post about student voice, I think the new portal for our 15,000 students and 1000 or so staff should empower more to share their views of how education should look in East Lothian.

I chipped in with some of the news about the Scottish Learning Festival and the way Learning and Teaching Scotland will be trying to cover the event and capture all the coverage from you guys on the web. Having just worked out, we think, how to get across an event with something like 160 talks, 6000 attendees, the exhibition, the social spaces, international lounges and 32 Local Authority participations, all with a very small crew, I'll be in for some interesting times trying to do it in practice.

Also there this week and hopefully back for more another time were Jon, Tim (whose handywork on promoting Humanist weddings we've been seeing on the national news this week), Andy and Frasr.

Next week's open Edinburgh Coffee Morning will be the same time, same place; find us on Facebook if you want to enjoy the fun all week long. Well done to Mark who was arguably the earliest out of bed at 5am to make it in from Ayr, even with Graham contending for his place from Toulouse. I propose some kind of prize for the furthest traveled. I'd be in with a chance from Leith, surely.

Comments

[Tess Watson]

Sound like a really productive morning. I must try and getalong next week!

Tess :-)

[chris]

I could so have done with multiple desktops at midnight last night! (Think music booklets, A5, plus online stuff ... think PV-type stress, in fact!)

[Quyen]

RE the ubuntu on a mac...it will run inside the Max OS using Parallels. Then you can have your cake and eat it too!

[John Johnston]

Hi Ewan,
Sounds like a great meeting. A holiday teachmeet sounds good for the work addicted .
There are a few desktop managers out there for OS X. I used to have a pretty basic free one but never got used to it.
You control:desktops which is shareware does the fancy transition stuff. Also Leopard will have spaces.

[DK]

re: multiple desktop switching - been using 'desktop manager' since getting a Mac and does exactly what was shown:

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/Desktop-Manager.shtml

:-)

DK

[Paul Harington]

Hi Ewan - you have laid down the gauntlet now for the next Coffee Morning :) Thanks for the offer on the Slitch invites, will be in touch. Paul

[Jim McDougall]

I lie the sound of these coffee mornings-Right now I'm reading Clive James' "Cultural Amnesia", much of which is a homage to the Vienna coffee house thinkers of early 20th century; maybe there's a parallel! How often, and where, do you meet?

[Ewan McIntosh]

Every Friday morning, 8am, Centotre, 103 George St, Edinburgh. All more than welcome!

[Digitalkatie]

If I can get myself up in time I'll come along tomorrow - it'll be good practice for going back to school next week! :-(