The series has been really informative and I’ve applied quite a bit of what I’ve learned in my day-to-day work.

Tomorrow’s sessions include on on managing up and one on performance management.

I wanted to blog the sessions, but I may be sans laptop for the trip. I picked up a new power adapter for my Macbook and while I was at the Apple Store in Crocker Park, Ohio, the genius said he could also replace the case around the trackpad as I had cracked it. I said sure, and 15 minutes later my laptop was done and good as new.

I didn’t use it until last night, when I wanted to live blog local elections results at ErieBlogs.com. I unwrapped the new adapter, plugged it in, press power and nothing happened. All I get is the sleep light blinking quickly.

I called Apple and with no store location nearby, I’ve got to mail it in. I’m going to try re-seating the RAM, as I’ve read some anecdotal reports on the web this has helped. Wish me luck.

This morning, my cards arrived, a little more then a month later. I put 2 cards in my envelope – one saying “bring some thunder,” which I hope I’ve done, and the other was some ideas of how to best communicate ideas with upper management.

I’ve tried to do a better job of that lately. I’m not sure if I’ve succeeded, but this card activity was a great way to be reminded about a goal or idea and serve as motivation to complete the task if you haven’t.

Given the rising costs of technology in an ever-changing field, I strongly suggest that you have an ongoing career plan. Just because you currently have a job, benefits and a fair amount of job security does not mean things can’t happen down the road. Higher education is entering a period of much greater accountability. The cost of college is too great not to. Constituents will challenge us to prove our value, to cut our costs, to look at outsourcing and other possibilities.

This has been a topic of discussion during this trip. To those of you readers who are in your thirties and beyond, I’d be interested to know what knowledge, experience or nuggets of wisdom you can share from your career growth, especially during the early-to-mid thirties middle management phase. You can email me directly or twitter me if you’d rather not post a comment.

I’m going to ask this same question to some of my friends, former bosses and other colleagues as well.

Anyways, these day long sessions have been full of great, practical knowledge. Sometimes when I leave a conference session or workshop, I learn some tips and tricks and maybe some a-ha type things, but not a lot of techniques I can start to implement right away.

Not so with this series – each half-day part is chock full of great information I can take back to my campus and start using tomorrow. I’ve already applied many things I learned back in September’s session, and today’s session was no exception – especially the project management section.

My colleague and friend James is here as well and took great notes from the session that I will for sure be referring back to. Dwight Fisher, CIO of Plymouth State, really framed the importance of project management and showed that it can be used on projects of all sizes – from small department projects to years-long projects like an ERP implementation.

He also provided some project management scope and charter documents that I know I will use – I can think of three projects off the top of my head that would greatly benefit from these techniques.

As a bonus, I got to talk for a few minutes with Cynthia Golden, vice president at Educause. I worked for Cynthia at Duquesne University and it was nice to reconnect. I think she also volunteered me for a few Educause and NERCOMP committees, which is fine with me. I’m all about trying to learn as much as I can.

Tomorrow’s an early travel day back to Pennsylvania and hopefully back to campus in time to catch the end of our new president’s inauguration. Don’t worry, we’ll be posting video.