Ed Bilodeau

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This weblog had moved: http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/

# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

The conference is over. My talk went OK, although it felt rushed. We each only have 15 minutes, which, when you are used to talking for 2+ hours, is nothing. Its breathing space. That's why I spent almost all day yesterday working on my presentation deck: I knew I'd have to be better prepared to make sure I got the important stuff in. I think I succeeded.

Although I won't be doing formal research on the topic, I plan on continuing to work on the model I have developed, that of professional education as a socialization process, as a series of migrations between communities of practice. No firm plans as of yet, just a vague feeling that it is something I should and want to do.

High points of the conference for me were catching up with Karl, as well as Louis D'Alton's talk on copyright in Canada.

Low point: realizing that a lot of folks are using sloppy definitions of knowledge, and will probably get away with it (this conference was not the place to call them on it).

Although the experience overall was more positive then I expected it to be, I'm still glad it's over, my last PhD commitment now fulfilled. Second to last, actually, since I plan on writing a brief paper on the talk and submitting it to my advisor for inclusion in my file. I prefer to leave as few loose ends dangling as possible.