Coming to you live from the Coronado Hotel in DisneyWorld. I'm tapping the keys at one of a hundred PCs in the middle of "Learning Land," the hub of this year's Learning 2005 conference. Elliott and Stan are whipping around on Segway scooters. There are maybe sixty of us in Learning Land at the moment but the room's so big it feels empty.

Learning Land. Certainly a grounded metaphor for our networked world. Land is so passé. Given that TomorrowLand, FantasyLand, AdventureLand, and the like have an established tradition here, I guess it's okay.

Surrounding the PCs in this immense room are "pods," chairs grouped around giant flipchart boards. Each pod is intended to seed a community or special interest group. Eileen Clegg has drawn starter graphics to get people thinking. (I've already added my scribbles to a few of these.) Chairs and tables are spread about to foster conversation. It will be fun to watch the communities grow when the crowd shows up later today.

Beth Thomas welcomed me at the door to Learning Land. It's all about networking, she said. How true. You can look at what's going on here online as never before possible, but the real action is face-to-face.

Check Mark Oelert's blog for his take on things -- and links to the blog, wiki, schedule, and so on.

Previous years at the Coronado on this blog:

Nostalgia. 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

Less glamorous, but also 1998 & 1999

Time warp: the 2000 program