Not at a Conference
It’s tough – when you look forward to being at a conference event and then have the whole world turn upside down with a global pandemic, resulting in significant changes to being at a conference. Such is my story for the OER20 Conference in London, England. I wrote a proposal, had the proposal accepted, planned the trip by booking a flight and accommodations, and then preparing the presentation with my collaborator. While the conference event was still being offered, through the technical magic of the folks at ALT, the actual ‘being there’ was cancelled. This required a shift in presentation mode.
My partner and I decided to do a pre-recorded session, which brought our shared talents into play with video production and media publication. We opted to create a video recording of the powerpoint presentation with an accompanying audio track. Nothing fancy, just the slides with our voices. This required a collaboration on writing the script for each slide. We alternated the voices so that each slide began with the same voice and ended with the other voice, making it easier to synchronize the images with the audio in the post production. Once the script was completed, we met on Skype to review and rehearse the presentation. I thought we could record during our collaborative time, but that was not feasible. So each of us created our audio as one single file, which I was able to splice together in the iMovie production. The challenges with recording quality quickly became an issue, which is something to consider for any future conference presentations we may do together. One other pre-recorded session done for the OER conference by presenter James Skidmore showed his recording ‘studio’ where he used a blanket over his recording space in order to muffle the external noises. Something to remember for future recordings.
Once the audio recording was sent from India (a.m. there) to me (late night here), I realized that due to my physical circumstances, I would not be able to complete the upload and linking of the video to the conference organizers by their required submission deadline. The option to post a blog URL was the alternative, so I quickly created a blog post on my Five Flames for Learning blog site, where I could upload and link the final video. An alternative solution for an alternative conference presentation. Here is our ‘not-at-a-conference’ presentation: An Ethos of Care (#OER20 Conference Presentation).
The conference days arrived and the activity was palpable. There was a social component where people were invited to add their information to a Social Bingo SPLOT. There was a dedicated ‘room’ (BB collaborate space) where people could meet to chat. There were unique hashtags for social engagement on Twitter – #OER20 #ThisIsMe #OER20 #Social. This resulted in some SNA (social network analysis) by one of the conference attendees.
And I added my early morning from Canada contribution.
I actively engaged and participated in live sessions on both days, while also enjoying many of the pre-recorded sessions. In some ways, this provided the best of both being at a conference where you get to attend sessions ‘in person’ and still being able to get to those other sessions that happen to be listed on the conference schedule in the same time blocks, so you know you can’t get to them all. In this way, there is an archived repository of session presentations that I can return to for future reference.
Finally, hearing from the conference organizers about their reflections on the conference that was not a conference made it all end as it should. Reflection is a key factor in anything that happens in online spaces, where care for self and others becomes the focus. Here is their Getting Air podcast interview with Terry Greene following the conference.
