My brother wisely told me when he saw who I followed on twitter to stop following dumb celebrities and start following some real people.  The problem was that back then, I didn’t know which real people to follow.  Luckily, I soon discovered that there were math teachers on twitter.  Lots of them.

I’ve been to MCTM a couple of times and NCTM once or twice. I felt energized, and motivated after those conferences definitely, but this year was different than any conference I’d previously attended. The difference was my willingness to make a face-to-face connection with people I knew from twitter.   I’ve loved twitter for a long time for a variety of reasons, but meeting some tweeps in person and getting to talk math and more math was a real thrill.  It mattered less which conference sessions I attended, although they were great,  and mattered more who I took the time to interact with in between.   Although Christopher Danielson says that he doesn’t remember me as a snarky student in one of his math ed courses, I was grateful to get to spend some quality time talking with the man behind the hierarchy of hexagons. I met many others, and truly got to appreciate the wide range of awesomeness that make up Minnesota’s mathematics teachers.  

Next time, though:  book a hotel room right away.  Lesson learned.