EVENT DETAILS

March 13–15, 2015
Fort Worth Convention Center/Omni Fort Worth Hotel
Fort Worth, Texas

OVERVIEW

Texas Instruments’ (TI) T3 conference brings together 1,500 educators and administrators from middle school through college to explore new learning technology. “Texas Instruments works with these educators to provide training,” said Dale Philbrick, TI’s director of professional development, “and to help teachers learn how to integrate technology into their classrooms.”

CHALLENGES

The event will be split between two venues: the Fort Worth Convention Center and, across the street, the Omni Fort Worth Hotel. “We’ll have a technology-HQ room in each of these locations,” Philbrick said, “and we’ll make sure those rooms are easily accessible, so that technology can be switched out between sessions quickly and efficiently, so that the right technology is in the right session room at the right time.”

INITIATIVES

New requirements for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education equates to a new layer of programming. “We’ll have a panel of folks to talk about STEM education and integrating technology,” Philbrick said. TI staff will also amp up their focus on social media, encouraging attendees to post photos to Instagram or Twitter. Philbrick hopes the conference’s theme, “Join the conversation,” helps draw in educators who couldn’t make it to the event — and also keeps T3’s momentum going once the live program is over. “We want to see how they’re implementing [what they’ve learned] back home,” Philbrick said. Staff will hand out 5,000 TI calculators to attendees for use during sessions; and, as always, TI will target “loyal educators” to beta-test new technologies.

Convene’s Pre-Con/Post-Con series asks meeting planners about their challenges and how they intend to address them (Pre-Con), and then circles back around after the meeting has occurred (Post-Con) to see how well they worked out.