I’m just over the wild and fun rush of organizing the strings and gizmos for last week’s Open Education Week including my own self inflicted plan to organize 12+ live streamed un structured open conversations (10+ hours worth).
In many places and one particular where the questions along that lines of “where do we go for the great open conversations since the demise of *******” (the platform that used to have a name not a letter). The quest for a single “answer” (guess mine) is fraught as then it begs for a technical solution. My other answer of “everywhere” also seems not to satisfy.
It goes to a discussion in a ZOMG DO THESE REALLY EXIST a comment thread on Kevin’s blog post referring to this topic where Sarah Honeychurch states “Yeah, I want what Alan wants – a world where we are all connected.”
I do agree but had to note a problem with this statement “a world where we all connected” is voiced in the passive tense, we get connected by the “world” aka a platform, a system. I was schooled in my aborted PhD writing says by the brilliant Dr Sue Kieffer to write science as much as possible in the active voice.
We have that world, but the verb tense I ponder— “a world where we are all connected” is to me different from “a world where we all connect” the power as we do through DS106, CLMOOC, etc is through the active voice.
https://dogtrax.edublogs.org/2025/02/01/toeholds-on-the-state-of-disconnections/comment-page-1/#comment-16761
But semnatic quibbering does not do much (and yes, I see quibbering is not a word, but serves as assertions that only a human writes here).
I was one panelist on a session devoted to this topic, a webinar Open Oregon Education Resources hosted on February 28 (recording now available).
I will save you the effort if you thought there was an answer to “where” — it was great discussion, but no answers emerged. Or many did.
One rather odd audience chat comment suggested that “maybe AI can help connect all the different spaces” I will just leave that one on the floor and move on.
The odd sensation that I left with, and needed a good long walk with the dog to let settle, was hearing this desire of a conversational space, but expressing preference for say more “bounded online spaces” (to quote Catherine Cronin) like the preference for the comfort of email lists.
I was also surprised and a little bit touched that fellow panelists brought up the community space I run/mismanaged at OEGlobal, our OEG Connect space that runs in Discourse. I am first to admit that in my hands it has become rather sprawling, and our seed time for getting people in there was the 2020 COVID times when we used it for our online conference.
I’ve tried so many tricks and approaches I have used before in other places, DS106ish type stuff, efforts to crystallize conversations like Three Days of Focus, a system for autoposting resources I tag in pinboard, Spotlighting resources, asynchronous open professional development, waving the get federated flag, dot dot dot.
There are blips of responses to some things and a few regular keeners, but I feel like it’s not the space a lot of people want or they don’t want to initiate. I hear often how valuable people find the resources shared, but honestly, my dog icon is about 85% of the content/activity. Weirdly, people keep signing up, like close to 1900, and in the past year, more from the lesser heard from parts of the open education world.
It’s just weirdly quiet most of the time.
Okay, so in the webinar people said nice things about OEG Connect, but I also heard them express a reluctance to post, like some fear of saying something that might be? embarrassing, personally revealing? I am a bit stumped there as I cannot think of any discussion topics that even call for a response that is so dangerously revealing. It’s just sharing and replying interesting stuff. Or so I thought.
I heard this problem of the time taking to post, which I had to say (and did) sounds weird, since the technical steps are clicking a button, writing a title, adding a paragraph or two and maybe a link — the equivalent of an email.
These are mostly my remembered, un-aided by AI, summarizing of what i heard. I’m taking it in, not yet giving up, but am a bit puzzled.
If you desire a single or large open conversations, on say OER in this case, but more broadly education or edtech, is it more the largeness to be lost in a crowd? To not be the ones to start conversations?
I might have totally missed the points being made, but I remain questioning and seeking to do something. What is this mythical place being sought, beyond what people remember from Twitter? I think too most people forget how long it took to get to a place in Twitter for the “good conversations”. It was years.
Now it seems if there is not an instant, magic, just add water or magic beans mix, then a reluctance to build anew?
Help.
I am lost.
Featured Image: Something seen in the world, no need for LLMs to spit out a synthetic image for this blogger. Snap That Magic flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)
I’ve been trying to think about a response to this, and the best thing I’ve been able to come up with is from our Dean of Student Development, who is fond of saying
“Community is a verb.”
Which is basically what you’ve been getting at this whole post. We say we want a “place” but I’m not entirely sure that’s true… we want a vibe. We want a scene.
And unfortunately I do think a lot of us want that vibe served up. I want to be in community, but I don’t want to push the community. I want to come in to something which already looks vibrant and welcoming. There’s a million reasons for that… we got burned by outside forces. We got burned in internecine battles. We don’t want to build another thing that falls apart. We’ve got too much on our plates to be leaders.
Shoot, what I really want is just to be 15 years younger, with that guy’s energy. And with some of the friends who have changed jobs or fields. And not knowing now what I didn’t know then. I don’t want a place, I want a time machine.
OK well, that sob story might feel good, it might even suggest some of the radical self-care we need to be energized enough to make change, but it doesn’t *do* anything.
You know what’s doing something? Leaving you a comment to say “yeah, I feel you”. Because the comments were part of what was fun about blogging, and the blogosphere was a good “place.”
And thank you, because I struggle with this at work all the time and it’s good to know I’m not alone.
And maybe I can think about some of those other good places and what made them work, and see if those lessons don’t fit something new.
The meaningful comment does something for both of us, thanks Joe. I like the more concisely worded sentiment of community being a verb, it reminds me of my mentor at Maricopa Community Colleges would say “community is our middle name” – different but same spirit.
I too yearn for the vibe and the spirit, and I can taste it still. Yet I do not want to go back in time… I always suspect there is a Rod Serling voiced warning or price for time travel. I am looking forward. The blogpsphere is still a good place. Every day I find more interesting gold nuggets in the quiet corners of the web.
At least we had those times and the vibe. Imagine never experiencing it? What would we know now?
I miss ya much, so look out, I’ll come calling/knocking.