November+2017+evaluation+meeting

Attending: Norton Gusky, Justin Driscoll, Kevin Conner, Kris Hupp, Tyler Samstag, Jordan Lippman, Justin Aglio

Here are some key points from the meeting: 
 * In the next month the Pittsburgh Technology Council will send out an RFP to see who might be interested in hosting TRETC 2018 and 2019 (We ask for a 2 year commitment). Montour has expressed an interest in hosting again, but we decided that we would like to see if there are other schools interested.
 * The 2017 event went very well. We had about 660 people attending. This included Montour teachers, presenters, exhibitors, educators, students, and other guests.
 * We received comments through Sched, our scheduling software, but we did not have the "respond" feature turned on for all sessions. We also received replies at the Closing session, but we would like to hear from more participants, so we'll send out the survey for people to complete, but only the people who attended the final session and completed the survey will receive Act 48 credit.
 * We plan on keeping the vendor setup similar to what we had this year wherever we land - near food and consolidated.
 * The lunch activities - the Innovation Zone, Student Showcase, and Poster Sessions - were well attended, but the Poster Sessions need to be in a separate area near the food.
 * We will continue to have a Closing Session that includes a reflective set of activities. The blog postings by role types worked very well. We'll try to make the report to the general group more like an Ignite Talk.
 * We will add a new category - Hands-On Workshops. We'll try to schedule both a set of morning and afternoon workshops at least 90 minutes in length. We'll reach out to presenters that we know might be interested in conducting a TRETC workshop.
 * We'll target pre-service teachers and consider working on a post-TRETC edcamp activity for pre-service teachers to process what they learned.
 * We'll attempt to grow the conference by targeting pre-service teachers, re-engaging the Remake Learning community, offering scholarships for schools with high rates of free and reduced lunch, and pulling in more decision-makers.
 * We'll have at least one panel discussion around the theme for TRETC 2018.
 * We'll attempt to be more responsive to people submitting proposals.
 * We'll put on hold any pre-conference activities, including the Vendor Reception, until we have a better sense of our theme and location.

You can add your comments to the Google Slide deck that we're using for the evaluation: @https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1emAEsv_Ay-0wvAM_0R0_bzVwxY2-_bZe_Yy8SWzP2Fs/edit?usp=sharing

Please complete the following Doodle poll so we can select a date for our February dinner meeting. This is the one face-to-face meeting for the year for the entire planning team. Please list a restaurant or two that is centrally located and can hold a meeting for at least 10 people. For the past two years we've met at Mitchell's in the Waterfront and at Lydia's in the Strip District.

@https://doodle.com/poll/3bm6fdy22qkabufw Recommended Restaurant: