Winter Working Connections 2013 Recap

By Mark Dempsey | January 13, 2014

The “Winter Working Connections” professional training event wrapped just before the holidays and by all accounts, it was a huge success. This is fourth time the National Convergence Technology Center (CTC) offered a three-day December counterpart to its long-running Summer Working Connections. The 2013 edition of Winter Working Connections welcomed over 40 IT/convergence faculty members from all over the country: California to Wisconsin, Maryland to Washington. Attendees, many of whom received some travel expense assistance from the National CTC, chose from one of three concurrent tracks – “Intro to Windows Command Line and PowerShell 3.0,” “Junos as a Second Language” (which included a free JNCIA-Junos certification exam), and “VDI in a Box.” The National CTC also experimented with an unusual lunchtime program in which four attendees were given five minutes to do a “lightning round” presentation with just 15 PowerPoint slides.

Here’s a quick sample of some of the reactions we got from participants when we asked them what features they liked best about the event…

“Networking with other instructors, getting ideas, getting training.”
“Hands-on training”
“Opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues.”
“Time at lunch and breaks to talk to my peers about how they operate in their colleges.”
“Great environment. Casual and informative. Fun to network with instructors from other schools.”
“The chance to get high quality professional development on the most current topics in IT.”