SIOP 2015: Schedule Planning for Big Data, Mobile, and Gamification

As in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, I’ll be live-blogging the SIOP conference, which begins Thursday, April 23 and runs through Saturday, April 25.

2015 turns out to be a banner year for Big Data. You won’t be able to turn a corner without running into someone talking about Big Data, and I’ll be making an effort to attend most of them. Social media, gamification, mobile devices, and Mechanical Turk all make appearances too.

In general, coverage of technology has expanded dramatically this year. I attribute this primarily to the creation of a new “technology” category on the SIOP program, right up there aside selection, training, teamwork and other traditional I/O areas. It’s a great time to be an I/O!

This post contains a list of all the sessions that I interested in attending, which this year are generally focused on Big Data, mobile, gamification, and technology-enhanced assessment, with a few IGNITE sessions thrown in.  If you haven’t attended an IGNITE before, give it a try – it’s an experimental, more-exciting-than-most-presentations sort of format.  Barring any unexpected battery problems, my live blogging will be on Twitter, with a permanent record stored here.  This year’s conference is in historic Philadelphia, which to be honest is a welcome change from last year’s logistically challenging Honolulu.  I’m sure I’ll be changing my tune about that after a few Hawaii-less years though!

Conference events are generally from 7:30AM to 4:30PM Eastern time, so tune in to Twitter for the live coverage.

In the graphic below, the events that I am part of are colored red, and events I am planning to attend are marked with a purple bar. Things can change last minute though. If you contrast this with last year’s schedule, and even more so from the year prior, you’ll note the dramatic increase in tech-related events. If you’d like to meet up at any of them, or if you think I missed something that I should definitely attend, please let me know!