There are few things better (for me) than inadvertently coming across a fabulous web site, resource, tool, or just a curious link– even better when I was not looking for it.
Cue the theme music of Web Serendipity…
On a break from work (I swear it was a break, honestly) I saw something Laura Gibbs I believe retweeted
I know not anything mentioned or described here nor any idea what/who @scholarLed is– but it can be a strong signal when someone like @OnlineCrsLady who shares good stuff. Stop now and click her link to follow, eh?
Something about the URL openpublishingfest.org triggered the curious nerve in my wrist where I found this gem
You can hardly spit these days without sending some gob on another online conference, but I sensed something here:
Open Publishing Fest celebrates communities developing open creative, scholarly, technological, and civic publishing projects. Together, we find new ground to share our ideas.
The fest is built on a desire to cheer people up and, at the same time, showcase a revolution in publishing occurring around the world and across sectors and industries. It’s an opportunity to bring people together in many ways, allowing participants to host sessions in their own style and on their own terms.
This is at once a collaborative and distributed event. Sessions are hosted by individuals and organizations around the world as panel discussions, fireside chats, demonstrations, workshops, and performances etc.
https://openpublishingfest.org/about.html
I first glanced at the calendar and spotted some sessions of interest to OEGlobal, so I grabbed some to share in our OEG Community Space.
But the format intrigued me as it is very much unconference style, and proposing something means tossing something in, and bringing your own live stream to the table (yes 99% will be zoom, but it’s not mandated).
The obligatory (for me) tweet is saying something myself, not just retweeting:
This sounds so refreshing- collaborative and distributed are the fine attributes– for an online conference format that is not trying to imitate the in person regular kind. That’s why I dig the Twitter based PressEd ones that Pat Lockley has spawned for a few years.
But hey, if I think it is so wonderful, I should do something. And now I am on the schedule, with maybe the only topic I ever share: It Goes SPLOT! TRU Writer as an open, shared, privacy respecting Writing Space.
I could have used my OEGlobal Zoom access, but want to learn something and roll differently. So I created a free Streamyard account (which I have seen several times this past year as a participant) as if I understand correctly, I can stream to my YouTube channel (if anyone is interested in joining me to talk about SPLOTs, I will share the stage!) (how exciting, eh?)
The Open Publishing Fest conference is still taking session ideas, so drop yours in, ok?
This gets me to another thought. It’s standard practice to bemoan (in twitter) how bad twitter is, insert the dumpster fire gif, and all the bad things that happen there. I do not deny they exist or that they are terrible.
But if you spend all your time fan your hands at the flames of the toxic waste dumps, you are missing out on the wild flowers in the field. And woah me, are we powerless to the algorithm?
Only if you give in to it. So my first rule of Twitter is to never look at the public stream. I never use the web version to browse twitter, and on my mobile my main view is to the twitter list of people I have more trust in than some looney like @HazBro555.
Avert your eyes of the algorithmic stream.
The other sanity strategy for me is to gloss over the STUFF THAT MAKES ME IRATE. I might scan it, and while the last US President of He Who Shall Me Nameless I was slinging my barbs and making critical gifs all the time… it did not really help me much.
I might scan, but I do not dwell on what people cite as news.
I am looking for wild roses in the field. It’s the same as I went about scouring the web pre-twitter, I try to keep my antennae up for something out of my normal view of reading that might be interesting. It could be a curious URL in an email, a link at the bottom of a page. It is sometimes a search result way down the page. But I want to be open to pick up that Webby sense of Something Interesting.
Okay, I cannot really quantify it, but I can say I find things like this on a daily basis. And I would rather be chasing and sharing them than JUST BEING SO MAD THAT EVERYONE KNOWS I AM MAD.
That’s how I do it, I cannot promise it works for anything else.
But I can touch that same nerve fiber of open curiosity that I felt the first time I jumped into a web browser.
You can retweet all the threads and gifs and terrible Facebook news that everyone else is, I’d rather be in the obscure rabbit holes of the web finding flecks of gold or wild roses.
Bonus Semi-Related Tip
Spotted in the grass after this post had flowered …. 9 Ways to ‘Rewild Your Attention’ by Clive Thompson sounds almost like a listicle but it’s not- some practical, off the road ways to find the gems (and thumbs up for starting with RSS feeds)
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