I had a lot of fun at this year's EDEN Conference, and I would like to express my thanks to all those responsible for the organisation of the event. From the great idea of having the marquee outside the venue for lunch, drinks etc., to the inspired choice of the city of Valencia to hold the conference in, all ran smoothly and was enjoyed by all. Valencia is in some ways its own kind of Eden, with a city plan that is divided by a meandering inner city park that has replaced the course of an old river bed. You can walk for miles along this garden route and simply take in the beautiful scenary, the jacaranda trees in full bloom, and the orange groves heavy with their sweet fruit. The stunning Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of the Arts and Sciences - pictured below) provides a futuristic spectacle both day and night and is well worth an hour or two of wandering around, just to appreciate the sense of scale and space, as well as the fine attention to detail the complex affords. And then of course, there is the old town to see with its many churches and museums and the soaring cathedral.
It was wonderful talking to so many smart people about their passion of advancing e-learning further. I had several prolonged discussions with new President of EDEN, Morten Flate Paulsen and other members of the executive committee, such as Denes Zarka and Ari-Matti Auvinen and touched base with other old friends including Nikitis Kastis, Montse Guittert, Albert Sangra, Niall Sclater, Thomas Fischer, Grainne Conole, Marci Powell, Thomas Kretchmer and Sally Reynolds. I also met several people face to face whom I had been linked previously online, including Alex Pickett, Deborah Allen, Sebastian Fiedler and Ricardo Torres Kompen. New friends were made, such as Peter Shea, Deborah Allen, Thomas Richter and Stephen Jenner, and many more whose names have slipped me, but will not doubt bump into again and have more interesting conversations with. Thank you all - you made my short stay in beautiful Valencia cerebral, enjoyable and memorable (Apologies if I have misspelt any of your names).
I can't wait for next year's EDEN conference in Dublin. I will for the first time be able to get a direct flight from my home town of Plymouth, and be there in just over an hour.
Planes, people and places by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.
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