To respond to the call for who’s at the Open Education 2023 Conference starting tomorrow… me! I am.
As bookends for now and my first OpenEd conference 2009 in Vancouver, I submitting what is a pre-recorded session framing these events, Still Amazing 14 Years Later, True Stories of Open Sharing goes back to what I shared in 2009.
It’s really just those experiences of unexpected connection, serendipity of something one has said, done, published, in the quote unquote “open”. It happened a lot to me in the 2000s and still does in 2023.
I shared in the session both one of the first ones about my photo of my old car parked in front of a sign i Death Valley ended up on the cover of a German pop band’s C.. And for a newer one, I unraveled from a blog post noticing a name on an old building in Seattle surfaced the story of legendary Baker Bill that still surfaces comments from family members or people who remember his bakery.
But it’s not just me, the whole point of this 14 year activity has been to lure others to add their own stories in a collection at https://stories.cogdogblog.com/.
Frankly, in 2023, when I did my casting for new stories, I got more than usual resistance or wondering what the heck I was asking for. Maybe it’s the post-pandemic effect or the energy draining world many of us slog through day to day, but I cling to these as one of the small things I consider as the spirit of radical hope, as in Good. Maybe it’s just not the same web as it was in 2009 (cross out “Maybe”).
Still, I hope to fill the conference theme of celebrating the 20 years of the OpenEd conference community, as it was called in the early days, a family gathering. The family is big this year!
The recording is done, but the story collection goes on. If you have ever, ever experienced one of these small stories of unexpected response, connection, serendipity from something you shared online, please add a story here. It can be a link to a posted video, audio, uploaded audio, or just an image and a written story.
All stories accepted!, welcome, cherished.