The North Quad Residential Complex at the University of Michigan is the ideal place for a conference on Computers and Writing. I’ll do my part to fetishize the awesome people-focused technology in this place.

Low-tech but innovative table wedges. Six make a tight circle; more make an expanding donut.

A flatscreen computer monitor, next to an LED tickertape that runs up the wall.

Monitors hanging on walls make an instant gallery space, for student work or campus announcements.

Old-school whiteboards, a reconfigurable table, and a monitor. (This room also had street-level windows.)

The “Benedek Family Media Gateway” is an impressive illustration of ubiquitous computing and ubiquitous learning.

Everywhere, monitors streamed images from the conference — slides uploaded by presenters, snapshots, Twitter streams, etc.

The lower level is a bit out of the way; more contemplative, but not isolated.

These monitors were everywhere.

Beneath each monitor, a panel of pluggy goodness.

Many of the monitors were labeled like paintings in a museum; this one had a 2d barcode.

A team from Seton Hill University (Laura Patterson, Christine Cusick, and I) gave a workshop on teaching writing with iPads.

I also participated in the panel, Making Writing Socially Engaging: Asking Why New Media Draws
Us In.

Rather than liveblogging, I tried livetweeting (something that is only practical when the venue has free WiFi… hint hint, 4Cs), and found the experience thrilling — especially the massively multiplayer livetwitting of “Is Blogging Dead?”

Kudos to Mark Sample, who archived the Computers and Writing 2011 #cwcon tweets for us who were too in-the-moment to think about such things.