When I was an undergraduate student at the University of Northern Iowa, I had my first experience with Adobe's creative solutions. Photoshop, Illustrator, Pagemaker (the predecessor to InDesign), and the now defunct web editors PageMill and GoLive, were wonderful creative tools that enabled me to engage in all sorts of artistic endeavors. The pricing for these applications was fairly high even in the late 90s. Academic pricing certainly helped, but the pathways to upgrades were costly. Thankfully, in 2012, Adobe has gone to the cloud.

The greatest higher education technology conference in the universe takes place next week. The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference is simply amazing. As the epicenter of higher education and technology, this event offers up something for anyone who works in higher education. Ok, I know that I sound like an extreme fanboy right now, but trust me, this is an outrageously fabulous event. On my meeting calendar I've scheduled conversations with representatives from Pearson, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, AT&T*, and Ellucian. The amount of information that will be disseminated at EDUCAUSE is staggering. Major product announcements, press embargoes, non-disclosure agreements, and an enormous exhibit hall…EDUCAUSE is the most jam-packed event of the year for the ed tech crowd.