The Fifth Annual eScholar Fall User Conference December 5–7, 2005 was our largest yet.  Users representing 31 school districts, nine states, and three state departments of education attended. Participants chose from 17 presentations by accomplished users, vendors, and eScholar experts, one-on-one Q&A with eScholar staff, and all-important social time for networking and information sharing.

Keynote speaker, Tim Magner, Deputy Executive Director of the Council of Chief State School Officers discussed the increased emphasis on data driven decision making from a national perspective.

eScholar’s Wolf Boehme, President (left) and Shawn Bay, founder and CEO greet Jason Palmer, who was there to represent eScholar’s partner, SchoolNet.

Dr. Terrence Young, CIO of Guilford County Schools, Greensboro, NC described how they are using the data warehouse as a tool to address questions and work on solutions to close the achievement gap.

Dr. Young illustrated the paper blitz his staff endured prior to Guilford’s move to the data warehouse.

eScholar staff were on hand to welcome and meet conference attendees…

And to offer expert, personalized advice during the one-on-one Q&A session.

Shawn Bay presented eScholar 101, an overview of the eScholar approach to data warehousing.

Scott McLeod, Lead Programmer and Data Warehouse Project Manager for the Cumberland County Schools, Fayetteville, NC evoked tears of laughter with his instructive tales of their successful data warehouse implementation.

Susan Bell, Senior Systems Analyst for the South Carolina Department of Education, and Steve Setzer, Director of Special Projects for Edustructures explained how, using eScholar Uniq-ID™, they assigned a unique identification number to every student in SC public schools.

Conference attendees and members of the eScholar team socialized after hours.