Michael Dell Drops In

So the highlights of our Dell visit yesterday were a trip to the production facility, which is just a mind-numbing configuration of belts and boxes shooting around in all different directions is some type of organized chaos, and a 45-minute drop in Q & A by the one and only Michael Dell. Very cool and very interesting.

Unfortunately, this is one of those wierd new Web moments where I don’t really know how much I can write about what he said. We all signed non-disclosures, and while nothing he said had much to do with future Dell product lines or new ideas, I’m still unsure about what’s good blogging ethics in terms of writing about it here. (Anyone have any direction?) So here are some admittedly tepid observations and comments.

He came across as very unpretentious and seemed genuinely interested in our perception and experiences with Dell. (I was tempted to bring up Jeff Jarvis’s recent rants about Dell customer service, but I bit my tongue.)

He has a pretty Friedman-esque outlook on the world in terms of the challenges we face from places like China and India. And in general terms, he indicated the need for some serious rethinking of education here in the states.

We pressed him on tablet PCs and what Dell’s plans are in the market. Suffice to say Dell hasn’t seen enough of a market yet to move in that direction, though he does want us to let him know what we find in our pilot. (And from what we’ve heard, there is a good chance that he might actually read what we send him…)

Talk about a perfect photo opp…for some reason, someone had put our school homepage up on the board room screen, and for his entire talk, he was sitting right in front of it. I woulda killed for a camera.
All in all, it was just really interesting to get to spend a few minutes with someone who, like him or not, is one of the most successful businessmen in history and who obviously could have a big effect on what we are able to do in our classrooms.

In general, however, our visit hasn’t pushed my thinking as much as I had hoped it would. In terms of what Dell is offering these days, it’s been quite an eye-opener, and they do have some serious vision for “Intelligent Classrooms” and the like. And it hasn’t all been sales pitch in the guise of “we want to know what you think.” But the solutions they offer aren’t very realistic for a large number of schools, at least not at this point.

More today and then a flight home tonight. By then I’ll have over 500 posts to read in the edblogger section of my Bloglines account. Oy.
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