Over the past few weeks, many of our team members have been on the road, attending industry conferences and events and meeting with Ed-Fi Community members. We were lucky to either catch up with many of you on the road or on social media where several have joined the conversations. But in case you missed us, here are some of the highlights:

  • Our president, Troy Wheeler, and manager of strategic partnerships, Sean Casey, connected with state technology leaders at the State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA) Leadership Summit & Education Forum in Washington, D.C. The conference focused on personalized learning with a deep discussion on how states can demand interoperability to leverage data for academic excellence. We’re excited to be working with SETDA on state interoperability efforts and look forward to seeing what is accomplished!
  • Chris Moffatt, director of technology, Sayee Srinivasan, solutions architect, and myself joined state CIOs and their teams at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) Education Information Management Advisory Consortium meeting at the SAS Institute in Cary, N.C. Conversations centered around data standards, their use and quality, data privacy, and information management. We were particularly excited to explore with states replacing legacy systems, alignment and collaboration with CEDS, and implementing financial transparency reporting requirements.
  • Troy and I also joined a second CCSSO meeting on Communicating Performance: Reporting in the Age of ESSA. This meeting dug into ESSA implementation and engaged state teams in exploring how to turn data into information to inform the public and support school improvement.
  • Sean and Shannon Kerlick, solutions architect, presented at the annual iNACOL Symposium in Orlando, FL, engaging with district and and school technology leaders around achieving interoperability through the power of collaboratives.
  • Finally, Sean and Troy headed west to San Francisco to the EdSurge Fusion conference to cook up support for interoperability with ed-tech leaders from across the country. They led an implementation workshop, “Cookbook for Personalized Learning – How to do personalized learning without a platform,” and engaged in discussions with education leaders around learning, equity and technology.

Between the 2017 Ed-Fi Summit and Bootcamp and the whirlwind conference scene, we’ve had a busy but exciting October! As Willie Nelson says, “On the road again – just can’t wait to get on the road again, the life I love is making [interoperability a reality in education] with my friends.”

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