In this article, the author has taken a little excursion back in time to illustrate the importance of two vital concepts in the minds of smart IT project managers, when they begin to consider smart-classroom installations and implementations, and the technologies they will choose. Those watchwords are: "standardization" and "boring." Certainly, nearly every project manager would mention the first watchword: "standardization." The second word--"boring"--nobody says, per se. But technologists intimate it in the other things they say; as the author's little time-machine example illustrates, they certainly allude to it when they say they want reliability. And the additional things they must have--"contingency backups," "low cost of ownership," "technical support simplicity," and "reduced training requirements for users"--are not bells and whistles, but boring requisites. The good news, however, is that the journey to standardization and boringness can be an interesting, if not downright exciting, process.