Building Blocks Conference Day Two

Feedback from last year's conference told us that we needed to put more time in the schedule for networking. This year we made sure that there was plenty of time for folks to chat with one another. At some times it was hard to walk through the hallways because there were so many small groups deep in conversation. I enjoyed talking with many of the attendees, learning about what they're developing, the challenges they're facing and how they plan to use Building Blocks technology to help overcome them.

During the conference a number of visitors to the hotel would pass by our session rooms and see the Blackboard logo. One passerby, a teacher who uses Blackboard in Amsterdam stopped and asked me about Building Blocks. When I told her about some of the tools available to teachers through Building Blocks her face lit up and she said that as soon as she got home from chaperoning the school trip to DC she was going to talk to her System Administrator about getting some of these free Building Blocks installed on their system.

One of the best sessions for me was the feedback session that George Calvert, SVP of Product Development and I had. We got some excellent ideas from the attendees about how we can make the Building Blocks documentation much better, clarify the internal processes that Blackboard uses to develop and test our software, provide more training and educational opportunities for clients and more. George and I will meet this week to see about how we can begin to implement many of these suggestions.