It starts with my frustration in school as a bright student. Along the way there are stops at projects, discussions and other events. I'll try to keep it relatively short. After all, you can always ask questions if you're interested.
School Day Blues
In school I was usually one of the brightest in any given class. That's not to brag. Teachers told me this in different ways all through school and still do. Sometimes it was telling me not to raise my hand, because they knew I knew the answers. Sometimes it was odd special treatment in other ways. The point is that I was known to be highly talented. That's about as far as it went.
Only a couple of times did that talent actually count for much. With one math teacher I could do the last two or three problems of the homework that require being able to do all the rest, because the rest was so easy to me that I pretty much stopped thinking while doing it. It becomes rather difficult to do calculus when you aren't thinking. I wasn't a problem, so I didn't get the teacher's time.
More than that, there were times when high intellect got me in trouble. What do you do when you disprove a teacher and they get irritated? What do you do when the test questions could be taken three different ways and all three corelating answers are options? What do you do when almost every teacher says they love your work, if only you'd do more, and there isn't enough time to do a lot more? What happens when that high intellect gets derailed by the bad design of the system you're in?
Going It Alone
It didn't take long for me to start having problems in school. One of the earliest was my ability to focus, to which I was allowed to use a walkman and natural sound tapes. That was one of the simplest problems I've had. So, I was motivated to look for solutions, and did.
Unfortunately it was only a few years ago that the solutions started coming together in my mind. For more on those ideas you should read some more of my posts, as this blog was made with the sole goal of moving forward towards getting those ideas made into reality.
As I've said before, I started designing without any help. It was a good start, but the progress wouldn't have gone as well if it weren't for the ideas of others in text, audio and video formats.
I've been making progress on my own, but going solo has it's limitations. For one thing, I don't have a lot of resources. For another, I don't have a lot of experience or technical expertise. Contacts are something I'm collecting, but I want to talk with people about interesting ideas and find people who want to do similar projects so we can help each other.
Open Distributed Conference
So a couple months ago the Open Distributed Conference idea popped up and I have been pushing for it since. I've blogged about it, but here's Jim Groom's post in reaction to the idea, http://bavatuesdays.com/bavacon-or-how-blog-branding-ate-my-soul/ . I'll publicly admit to using the Bava to get this to move forward, and that's fine with Jim. As he put it, "But when we get rid of the idea of Bava from this equation, what Steven is talking about really fascinates me". While I added the Bava to get people involved, he wanted to drop the Bava part and keep going. We are both happy with just moving the idea forward and leaving the Bava out of it.
What it actually is might be a question wandering around your mind, so I'll quote my original description. "Might it be possible to arrange a digital conference thing with no physical location? A mash-up of sorts using different digital communication tools? AV chats, chat room discussions, feeds and more through a portalesque webpage to the individual locations?" Yes, those are questions to answer a question, but that digital mash-up of communication technologies and techniques is the idea. With it people can come together, get food for thought and sit around with each other discussing their thoughts.
Back Channel Discussions
Jim and I have been chatting now and then since about possibilities and musing, but the ideas really didn't seem like they would just start out effective. Without a core group of people I didn't think it would go very well, which is why I was into the idea of an event. Draw people for a small event, start some good discussions and maybe people would come back to see what all we brought in for discussion later.
So while the ideas we had fit together seamlessly, content and audience issues kept nagging at me. I wanted to do an event to draw people and start discussions, but I wasn't sure how to do it. Then I came across the Product Launch Formula ( http://www.productlaunchformula.com/2/blog/?p=57 ) and started putting the pieces together for an event. After a little discussion, Jim said he was in.
Admission of Guilt
Yes, I'm using the PLF on you right now. This is the story element in the suggested line up of communications. Whether or not I did it well doesn't really bother me. Mostly I'm using the "sideways sales letter" idea as a way to better share my thoughts on this event and motivate others to participate. I like how Eliane Alhadeff and Frank Hecker referred to this event through e-mails.
"the whole idea is about generating massive weekly blogging around specific - and innovative - educational themes" - Eliane Alhadeff
"a blog carnival approach" - Frank Hecker
I like playing, especially with interesting ideas. It's even more fun to engage in discussion about interesting ideas and topics with creative, intelligent people. While there are serious parts of this event, I want it to be a lot of fun.
Basically, this whole event is designed to fit a list of goals I have. Benefits, questions and more will come later, as per the "formula", but I'm making several alterations. One big one is the offer. Here it is. You pay me nothing. As in, I'm not selling anything. I put on the event and run it. You participate as much as you want. However, I also warn you now that I like the idea of free bonuses and intend on trying to figure out ways of rewarding significant contribution. One of those ways is the link love (Frank and Eliane just responded quickly and positively to e-mails about this.), but another is the potential for an e-book in some format for the masses. The more your contribution to the discussions, the more people are likely to take an interest in you. (Psst. That's part of why I'm putting this thing on. Hosting a cool event is a BIG credit.)
Seriously, Please Participate
As a student of the system, I'm asking people from different backgrouds to come together and help create proof of interest and helpful resources. Since this is a blogging event, the posts and comments will be online. With enough links back and forth, this could catch people looking for resources on open, engaging education and help them get closer to their goals.
Don't blog, not a problem. Text, audio, video, images, slides and anything that I can include I'm willing to include. If nothing else, I'm willing to post it for you, giving you full credits for it. Commenting is just as important to this event as posting, so a bunch of people who read and comment on posts is fine. Want to talk about it on a forum, go for it, but please share a link to the discussion. I for one plan to do this to try to get more people involved.
I'm doing this because I can't participate in normal physical events like conferences. I've posted about opening up conferences and the reasoning to new kind of conference before. Please join me to make this event more meaningful.
Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan
View Blog Reactions
0 comments:
Post a Comment