It was actually quite fun to chat yesterday - I think we were about eleven or twelve in the Moodle chat room, and five or six were connecting wifi from the conference centre - but in many different corners of the hotel area! Synchronous, on location, but NOT face to face...
A handful of others were Somehow, to me it did not make that much difference that I was today connecting from home, in another continent - Europe, Denmark, Farum. I felt srtongly conencted - aslo because our conversation was circling around our shared interests, ed tech, virtual communication strategies - and a bit of local conference related social smalltalk; with me having sweet memories from another edtech conference, the Telelearn 2000 in Toronto where I WAS present live, on location and already a virtual member of the Global Educators' Network. I recall from that occasion how I felt I had to find Sylvia (we were going to share an expensive hotel room), and I hadn't received a message from her that she would only arrive the next day! My memories are a mixture of the scheduled presetations, workshops keynotes and poster sessions that I attended, and the more informal social networking, the reception , the dinner and dancing, and a visit to a beer restaurant. I could make a lot of name dropping from those three days, so rich of impressions and inspirations.
As part of a small leader team, I am going to deal with the practical administration and social facilitation of a one week all online conference starting in just ten days. Chaos reigns in many corners, and some technological challenges are now less threatening as we have kept nudging the tech developers until they started bug fixing, and the presenters are getting more and more ready, etc etc. We even have a strong hope that Salvor will soon get in touch again. (Better go straight to me and Anne Fox; Michael D. seem to be a very busy person these days, Salvor!!
But - what if we arrange an online conference, and nobody will join us! It is open and free of charge, so we do not have registration lists to give us a hint. I think we should find a way to make people want to join the Moodle forums for each presenter/discussion leader. I was some involved in the knowtips online conference in February - but I am not sure how we managed that logistic detail. And we should follow up on our first email flyers with a more intensive campaign among the target group : Nordic language educators (and anyone else) with an interest in ICT, voice communication, social tools, etc, to enhance the Nordic neighbour languages. Whoa! It helped me clarify my thinking, to start writing to you as if we were still together in yesterdays' chat room; I guess this is a matter of trust building and a feeling of connectedness! www.nordiskestemme.dk
Well, dear Vancover conference friends, have fun at your dinner and meeting!
Sus
PS
If I could afford it, I would be happy to join you and get fresh inspiration. Yes, perhaps educa in Berlin; that's not very far from Denmark...