The Answer: “Yes, but hardly anyone cares”: Burying the Amazing Stories

My new blog post category might be “Enough Of the Web Nostalgia” where this one can be filed. Trust me, I am excitedly peering into the future!

I took the Amazing/True Stories of Openness for it’s last hurrah ride, back to the Open Education Conference where it started in 2009. It was perched in the schedule as a pre-recorded presentation, and I appreciate Brian B for at least watching and commenting.

I framed it on the site as “OpenEd, Are there still Amazing Stories of Openness Fourteen Years Later?” and while I garnered a few more, the sentiment seemed to be…. YAWN. But I had fun making a video, that counts for something?

But in a way, I I tried to summarize, the Amazingness of spontaneous connections maybe not be so amazing any more, it happens a lot, perhaps in nano-doses through the reply and like buttons in social media.

So this schtick is going to be shelved, buried, and not resurrected again. That does not mean the stories will go anywhere, i will just let them accumulate dust off in the corner of my pile of sites.

Does it still happen? Hell yes, I keep getting things that are like gentle echoes of blog posts from say, discovering the legend of Baker Bill from a building sign spotted in 2015 (a comment came in 3 months ago, 2023).

Or even this one, a 2011 photo of some stuff my Mom lifted from restaurants is being used in a Grade 3 school book.

This is the weird, small, quirky internet I came for and am still immersed in. That’s my story.

Thanks to all who have chimed in over the years, and thanks to the Open Education Conference for putting out the welcome mat. I have to solidly comment their entire team for running a highly energetic and well done online conference. It is possible!

Get ready for the 2024 OpenEd- a hybrid conference that I promise I will not dig up the stories again, I promise!

Featured Image: Digging For Information flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license my modifications, cropped and added screen shot of my presentation video. No AI was used in the mashing up of this image!