Whee.  The couple in the next room is having some serious sex, and I can feel the thump of it through my headboard.

Ugh, I am pooped.  I’m at the state leadership teams retreat for e-Learning for Educators.  This is, in many ways, the inaugural meeting for North Carolina– it’s the first time all the members of our leadership team have been in the room together.  We start the work of really forming the team tomorrow, but it’s impressive that some of our team members made the leap of faith necessary to come here when their roles in this project aren’t really even defined yet.  I hope they will find it rewarding.

I came in yesterday for the directors’ meeting, and I don’t know what I would have done if we hadn’t had time to socialize over dinner last night, because we hit the ground running today and just kept going.  We had some time to ourselves in the afternoon; I could see my peers walking on the beach, but I spent most of it out on the patio of my hotel room working.  I figure this could be my last chance this week, because it looks like we’ll be busy from 7:30 AM – 9:30 PM the next couple days.  I am so glad I had the sense to take Friday off as a comp day.  I am so going to need it.

View from my balcony:

Notice the position of the sun relative to the coast. You don’t often get to see the sun setting along the coastline like that, but the beach runs east to west rather than north to south.

The cluster of people in the first picture is a smattering of state directors for e-Learning for Educators and EDC staff.

We had a keynote speaker at dinner (can I whine about sitting for three hours in a dining room chair?  can I note that I did it three separate times today?) who talked about sociometrics, and holy cow, it was way cool.  I had not thought much about how opinion leaders could be formally identified, and it seems so obvious now.  I made some Twitter notes… I’m sure people thought I was just texting all throughout the session.  (Well, maybe not, this seems to be a crowd that would understand what I was up to.)

http://twitter.com/rosswhite/status/999734683

http://twitter.com/rosswhite/status/999780791

http://twitter.com/rosswhite/status/999800548