 Okay, so it looks like we're recording and my name is Dr. Amy Tan, and I am from Houston Community College. I'm a member of the steering committee for Open Ed 21, and I want to welcome you to our community meeting on May 14. We're so excited that you all are joining us today from all over, and we're going to go through some of our questions. I think we have a pretty good agenda today. The first thing we always start with the mentee setup, and then we're going to bring you some organizing process updates, and those of you joining us today are going to get a lucky sneak peek at the call for proposals, which will be released sometime next week, early next week. And we're going to wrap it up with discussion, hoping to get some feedback about professional development. So, again, thanks for joining us today, and we will move on to our first mentee questions. Don't forget, it seems like you're all familiar with mentee, and you have navigated to mentee.com. The code for today is 1-2-4-8-4-4-1-4, someone put it in the chat for us, looks like Alex put it in the chat for us, and so be sure to join us on mentee so you can participate in the questions and answers and feedback. Thank you, Wendy. Wendy put the code in there again, and just a reminder, if you're not able to get into mentee and you want to throw your answers into the chat, we welcome that as well. Okay, so we'll move on to our first question. So tell us, where are you joining from? Can throw your U.S. state in there, your Canadian province, or your country? Oh, wonderful, we have lots of Canadian representation today. Looks like Georgia is leading, Colorado, somebody needs to throw Texas in there for me, because I'm not able to do it, Tunisia, wow, fantastic, New York, Quebec, I'm going to need some help with pronouncing the provinces, Michigan, Manitoba, excellent, we'll welcome everybody as always, this is being recorded, and you'll be able to view it later as well, and anyone who isn't able to join us will have access to the recording. So to get us started, we are thinking about summer here at Open Ed, so how do you envision yourself this summer, current Crunchy Cheetos, okay, so if you attended last year, you will know that we have an ongoing debate, Nicole, would you like to share about the debate, or would you? So it was a running joke at last year's conference, the great Cheeto debate over Crunchy versus Puffy versus all of the international varieties, so we like to throw in Cheetos to all Open Ed conversations. Open Cheetos. So it looks like some people see Cheetos in their feature, vaxed and relaxed, and oh, very, very busy is also, these seem to be tying, outdoors, outdoors is a good option, overheated, yes, those of us in Houston, Texas will be suffering, although we can't complain too much, we've had a lovely spring. Just one homebody, no snow, we're going to avoid the snow, and no pampered, I think that that's wrong, I think we need to find some pampering. We do have in the chat that someone will be pampering his pet, relaxed and efficient, that is a good one in the chat. Okay, well, I hope everybody has some good plans for this summer, and I'm definitely going to make some time to get away, so I don't know if I'll be pampered, but I will escape. Okay, and I think that that takes us to our updates, and so I will hand over the meeting to Nicole Allen. Thank you very much. All right, so just a couple of quick updates on the operations front here, just for those of us who, or those of you who are joining us for the first time, just a quick update on the operating structure of the conference, we're in the midst of a two-year sort of transitional period for the conference, being supported by a coalition of four organizations, OpenStacks, MyRorganizationSpark, University System of Maryland, and the Colorado Department of Higher Education, alongside this organizing of the 2020 and 2021 conferences. There's also a strategic planning process that's ongoing to sort of decide what comes next for the conference and what future governance will look like, and that's going to be a conversation that I know some of our future community meetings are going to address, and we have members of the team that's working on that here with us today. So the conference is supported by those organizations, but it's truly run through a community-driven process. The steering committee who is leading this meeting today, we are sort of steering the ship, but there's also other committees that are supporting different streams of work, and I just want to make sure to acknowledge all of the wonderful people that are involved in that. You can see the list on the link. And then, so many hundreds more people signed up to be involved in the conference in some way, and we are still working to set up a couple more committees that we're going to need as we get into the summer, and also we'll be sending out invitations for proposal reviewers early next week, since the call for proposals is imminent, as we will find out in a moment. So just really want to thank all who are here, who are involved in the process, and then also everybody who is willing to contribute to the conference that we haven't reached out to yet, we're excited to have you involved in some way, and we'll communicate about that soon. So I am going to turn it over to David for a few pieces of information about the 2021 conference. All right, all right. Hello everybody, my name is David Draper, and I'm coming at you from a beautiful sunny day here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and I'm here to tell you about the save day for the conference. It will be happening from October 18th to 22nd in 2021. So get excited, get prepared, it's going to be an absolutely fun time. I love a good fall conference, I know for me here it's all the leaves are going to change so it'll be good to be able to just sit around, watch the sun kind of start to get shorter and what's the leaves change and learn a lot more about open ed. So get excited, it's going to be a great time of year for a fantastic conference. It will be happening virtual again, so wherever you're at, it might actually not even be fall for you. So still enjoy the weather there, but it'll be online in the safety of your own home with a lot of great online programming similar to last year. So definitely get your setup ready to go, and I know there were some very interesting ways people attended last year from the local hero of the rocket cam showing the dog in every single meeting. So if you're trying to brainstorm fun ideas for how to engage in an online conference, now is always a great time for that. And registrations are going to open up in June, so keep your eye out for that, those are going to be starting relatively soon. I guess it's fast approaching now that we're halfway through the month of May. So keep your eyes open for that, and there's going to be very similar rates for registration as last year, and the scholarship process is going to be continuing on. So if you were somebody who was involved in the scholarship process last year or took part in that, definitely keep an eye open for that as well. It's a fantastic way to help ensure that this process is able to be accessible for as many people as possible, knowing that there are so many different contexts that people are coming to this conference for. And I know everybody's been hinting that we've got a fun sneak peek for the call for proposals coming up. We do. It's actually online currently, and it will be full announced on Monday. The proposal is going to be due on June 18th, which fun fact is actually my birthday. So my birthday present is going to see all the fantastic proposals that everybody's going to be getting. And then updates are going to be based on community feedback. So there's been a lot of fantastic work put into the call for proposals this year. I honestly want to make sure that everybody who's been working on a committee and even the subcommittees on those committees get proper thanks because it's been an absolute massive amount of work there. So thank you so much to everybody who's had their hands on this. It's been a fantastic process seeing it kind of grow and change for this year. And without further ado, I'll pass it off to Emily to kind of give us the full rundown through it. Great. So we're going to split up and the mentee meter is going to have a question. What feedback or questions do you have on the call for proposals? So feel free to enter those at any time. And then Nicole's also going to switch the screen over so we can actually look at the information that is contained within the call for proposals. And this really was a team effort. We have some of the program team members here today, Dylan, Stacey, Lisa, I think are here as well as our steering committee members that are also on the program team. David, Wendy, Amy Tan, Winnie from Spark has done an awesome amount of work on all of this. So a whole lot of people for us to think. So we have a little bit of introductory information about the conference catch the dates. And then below that, we have some information contextualizing our theme. And I'm going to pass it over to Nicole for a little bit more about the theme piece. Yeah. So we talked about the theme on our last meeting and we knew what the theme was going to be, but not the words we were going to use to describe it. So the words that will describe the theme are making open for all. And the theme builds on last year's focus on sort of reimagining open education as a solution to the, you know, the challenges that were brought to the forefront in 2020, you know, the new ones through COVID and the longstanding ones through, you know, systemic racism and structural inequities across society. And in choosing making open for all, it really centers action for equity and inclusion and also looks at the word all both aspirationally and critically, because we recognize that there are many ways that, you know, open isn't currently serving all and there are some limitations where maybe open isn't for everybody, you know, specifically in areas where it intersects with privacy and indigenous knowledge and, you know, other, other borders. So there's just lots of, you know, exciting conversation that can happen around the idea of making open for all and we just really want to emphasize the need for action in this year's event. So anybody else who's who's involved in formulating the theme, please feel free to jump in otherwise I'll pass it back to Emily. Awesome. Thank you, Nicole. And I really like this language here. So I encourage you all to read it carefully when you have more time. The next topic we want to discuss are literally the topics and we have 10 different topics to help ground people as they're submitting proposals. And some of these are very similar to what we had last year, right? We have an open education 101, but we also have some new topics that came out of brainstorming sessions that we had. One new one is ethical education, issues of agency, labor, privacy and consent. We also specifically want to invite members of the K-12 community and people using OER around the world to participate. So we have specific topics centered around those. For example, we have exchanging knowledge across borders, open education around the world to invite that international participation. And we also want to celebrate some of the fun that we have with open. So one of our topics is the joy of open, celebrating community care and collaboration. So the program team iteratively addressed these and the steering committee has been involved. I really want to thank Lisa Haldeman and Beatriz Canales who attended like at least three or four extra meetings along with Winnie from Spark to do wordsmithing. This was a very iterative process and I really, really appreciate all the different input. And I'm really proud of how these turned out. Of course, if you have questions, you can enter them into the mentee and we'll be popping back over there to look at your questions in just a minute. So anyone who was involved in this process, you know, on the program team or even on the steering committee and involved in generating these topics, does anyone want to say anything with respect to this list of 10 topics? Well, I appreciate a few positive comments in the chat. So thank you all for that. And of course, the goal is to try to inspire all of us to generate really exciting proposals for the conference. And so hopefully these will help move us forward with eliciting people's proposals. And Emily, people can, when they submit their proposal, they can click more than one topic. Correct? Yeah, you can select up to three is my understanding. So I think that will be helpful because of course, for example, you might be working in the K-12 space and also wanting to share something related maybe to teaching and learning through open. So there's definitely a way to mix and match these to really make them capture what your particular proposal is going to be about. Yeah. And noting that the topics are meant to be sort of encouraging as opposed to limiting. So they're intentionally sort of broad and high level to really encourage people to submit lots of different types of proposals that relate to these in all sort of different ways. So we'll see how the proposal shake out and how this ends up looking in the actual program once we get to the point of, you know, scheduling things and organizing things and sort of what tags end up going on what great. Well next up after discussing these topics are to really take a look at the different sorts of session types that are going to be available. So 10 minute pre recorded lightning talks are really very similar to what we had last year. The one thing that's new here is there will be a specific time during the conference when the lightning talks will be live streamed and so different lightning talks would have their little 10 minute slot in different places during the actual program. 25 minute presentations this year are going to be pre recorded which is different than last year. Last year people came and gave live 25 minute presentations that were recorded. And there's going to be a chance for them also to be streamed at a specific time during the program and we're encouraging although not requiring the presenters to hop on and so there can be a live chat definitely the people who are watching the presentations can chat with each other. And you know in some cases we'll have the presenters there too so we can have that engagement piece. Yes and having the specific time to live or to stream the lightning talks is based on some of the feedback we got last year. Also based on feedback from last year some people wanted some longer time slots they said 25 minutes is not enough. So we now have a 40 minute presentation slot. These will be given live and then recorded as they're being given so people can watch them on demand later. And this will be a great chance for people who really want to have audience participation or engagement of the audience as a part of their presentation. So that's something that if you're submitting that type of proposal you'll want to highlight in your proposal submission. And then related to getting good discussion between participants we also have specific discussion sessions which are also in the 40 minute time slot. Note that these will not be recorded. Another piece of feedback from last year was that not every conversation needs to be recorded and that it would be nice to have some space for some more perhaps candid conversations and so this discussion format is an opportunity to do that. Similar to last year we're also having a 55 minute time slot for panels where we can get maybe three or more different panelists and in this case it would be 45 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes at least reserved for questions with the audience. These will also be recorded and then finally a new format for this year is called open space and people can choose the time length they want between 10, 25, 40 or 55 minutes and propose something that's particularly innovative or just maybe a little more creative that you want to do in this space. And again whether these are recorded or not could be up to the presenter. Let's see, Nicole would you like to add anything about these six different session types that we have available? No I think that covers it. Awesome. Well so I suppose oh sorry just want to thank everybody who took the time to provide feedback on last year's conference because it really matters and it helps us make better decisions. So thank you for doing it and please keep it coming. Absolutely and that's about what we want to show here. There is the proposal submission information as David already said the deadline is going to be June 18th so keep that in mind. We're using a platform called Easy Chair so people will quickly make an account and then be able to submit their proposals. We have some information about the different requirements. You can only be an author on up to three presentations which is similar to last year and we have similar review criteria. We plan to get review decisions back to people by the very end of July. So here are the review criteria. And you know I think that's really all we wanted to talk about right now with respect to the call for proposals. But let's hop back to the questions in mentee and oh there's all sorts of awesome questions. And we're not going to answer every single question here. This is also going to give us good ideas for what we need to cover in a frequently asked questions section that will also make available. Students, yes there's definitely language in the call for proposals especially saying we are encouraging proposals from students. So that's one piece. I would encourage everyone here on this call to reach out to engage students that you think have something that would make a good proposal and encourage students to apply. We can keep thinking about other ways to you know especially try to make sure we have student participation in the conference. So some excitement about the topics, an idea on distinguishing session types by time it might be useful to be as explicit as possible about the expected outcomes of sessions in each type. And I will just say we do ask that people who are submitting a proposal have a clear learning or multiple clear learning objectives for what the audience will take away and you know I think it is kind of on the presenter to think about what can be accomplished in the amount of time that they're going to have. Yeah some people are excited about the open space idea and I'm excited about that too. So there's a question about the open space will we be using the post it's on the schedule board method and you know this is something that people are planning in advance so it's a little bit different than that on the fly kind of open space. Yeah and this is the call for proposals is for sort of contributed proposals that go through a review process as we get closer to the conference you know there's definitely going to be opportunities to add additional you know opportunities to connect with each other. Right and that kind of addresses the question about whether the open space section includes social events or if those are separate. But we also do want not not in this process but we will be soliciting ideas for social events and that's just going to come a little bit later. And then Nicole I think maybe we could get these to scroll and we could see. Yeah I'm trying to oh no I'm not sure if you can see what's on my screen. No that's good no Emily one of those things I saw was a question about the topics and I just wanted to say as someone who was part of the review process last year that several people look at the proposals and sometimes the reviewers think oh maybe this doesn't really fit in this topic or this theme or this category and so we might the reviewers might propose that it goes in a different category and usually there's a conversation with the proposer and when that happens so so I don't know about enforcing but but certainly that's a consideration and and how the program committee is putting together the the final program with with all the right and the 10 topics are really going we're trying to encourage proposal submissions with the 10 topics the organization of the sessions themselves and the tags that are used may you know look different and so that's kind of a different piece that aspect let's see there's a question are there moderators for the prerecorded sessions with the live engagement and it's yes yes and of course we're encouraging the presenters to be there if at all possible because that's going to make it a much richer conversation yeah and I don't think we're going to be able to get to all these questions but if you have other questions you're just like wondering about it would be very helpful if you could put them in because we still haven't written the call the FAQ so having sort of prompts of things that people are wondering that that we should make sure to address is very helpful Nicole I saw a question about reviewers do you want it or Emily do you want to talk about how people can volunteer for that so like technically the form isn't closed so if you're up for it here is the link to the form to fill out to volunteer and please do it fast but yes we do need many many proposed reviewers so we do invite people to join us for that indeed awesome yes and that'll take place during during late June well good so as Nicole said please do continue adding your questions here so that they can be addressed later and then as we're ready we're going to pass it over to Hailey we have some other mentee meter questions that we're going to go through sure all right well hi everyone my name is Hailey I'm part of the operations team that spark helping to organize the conference so we just had a couple of other questions we were looking to get some feedback on I know we're kind of out like a bit of a transition point where we're either wrapped up the semester or in the process of wrapping up and moving into the summer so we just kind of wanted to take a little bit of time to check in and just see you know how are things going on the ground level so you know wondering what the attitudes are towards all conferences and general professional development where you are and on your campus so I know obviously the last year was a little bit of a challenge just given sort of some of the uncertainty around budgeting at institutions and that may still be the case this year but what we're looking for specifically is just you know has this shifted over the last year our attitudes still relatively the same what is sort of the overall energy where you are at and feel free to either pop that into mentee meter or the chat also works if that's easier for you but mentee meter helps us keep things consolidated and just noting since we're not seeing any results it's entirely and if you've entered a result that you don't see it is likely that your device is still stuck on the last question so look for the drop-up option and click the go to slide but thanks Nicole so I see some answers starting to roll in need to regroup and look our rooms as we move ahead for a different year totally understand yes to conferences no to travel travel still unfolds main conference I plan around all that's so nice seeing some interest in professional development still entirely focused on teaching for online remote teaching no to conferences yeah so hearing that things are available but still not as widely open to travel and budgeting spring or summer is a better time for conferences one person says that's good to know finances are more clear yeah lots of interest in virtual conferences well you're in luck for this year PD's always encouraged great okay interesting so sounds like things are relatively the same as they have been over the past couple months but yeah thanks for just helping us get a little bit of a pulse on what's happening on the ground awesome and then I'll hand it over to Spencer for the next question thanks Hayley hey everybody this is Spencer at the Colorado Department of Higher Ed so excited to be involved here our next question is what would a successful experience look like for you at the open ed conference 2021 so again go ahead and pop that into mentee great first answer capital FUN I think something we're all seeking in our professional lives and just in general these days and I see a note about collective action I think that's one of the strengths of open education is this kind of collective community-based orientation so yeah getting in that would be amazing let's see what else we have coming through connecting engaging remote sessions that are not that are sorry that are run professionally yes I think we had we heard a little bit about what the session types are like and so that hopefully we'll get at that engaging nature let's see here other things coming through oh I love this I learned something new and I met some awesome people that is a great way to leave a conference so hopefully that will happen lots of themes around connecting making connections meeting new people I see a few snarky remarks about cheetos which does not surprise me given that's become our unofficial mascot for the for the conference last year opportunities to connect new learning opportunities things to bring back to campus I like that I am a hat I am certainly a fan of tangible you know things you can bring back to your your everyday job and those are big takeaways for me from a conference as well sustaining community cohesion ooh I like that too yeah I I think there's lots of themes that are kind of popping up to me here you know as Nicole mentioned before a lot of the feedback from last year's conference which we gleaned during the conference and again after the conference and even in these community calls has really informed how this this conference has been shaped and obviously that's evident in the program content that the program team shared earlier so all of this feedback is really important for that reason all of this feedback is really important for that reason rocket I see rocket being highlighted rocket is a dog that was featured in last year's conference we had a lot of pet conversation on discord which was a cool place to connect so yeah lots of different channels lots of people bringing kind of them themselves hopefully to the conference as they see fit so and Jeff says everybody has to join discord this year it was a lot of fun discord was another channel like I mentioned we had conversations on twitter discord through kind of the hangout spaces and all those so great these are fantastic I think I'm going to kick it over to Wendy for our next question now that we know what you all feel like for that one so Wendy over to you hi everyone I'm sorry my camera is not on I'm using my daughter's computer because mine died well actually you know I got a hand sanitizer put all over it that's what happened so anyway I'm Wendy from Maryland and so your question is how could the open ed conference support and accelerate the trajectory of your work in the future so how do you think it will help you in your professional realm if you present or if you join I'm certainly excited to join this year legitimacy up you get to learn a lot of new projects and efforts programs bringing strong community diversity making connections in the field that's what I love about conferences new ideas professional network learn what others are doing yep certainly as educators we uh we never steal anybody's idea we just borrow the borrow opportunities to get feedback from your pedagogy badges yes and for little badges it's an interesting perspective for an instructional designer opportunities for collaboration and research and grants yep I agree seen a lot of stuff about discord in the chat so I'm excited to know more about that as well since I wasn't a part of this conference last year that's a good one confidence booster I see Alex said it's not for everyone there for discord in the chat so uh someone learned about what discord is too since we've keep mentioning it discord and cheetos seems to be the theme here well it looks like we haven't gotten any new responses in a while okay so there's gonna be over Tiffany right okay okay so I'm just gonna um wrap us up here what else do you have to tell us what else is going on what's um what other thoughts do you have on the conference call for proposals how are we doing um what else do you have to tell us interest in making it global thanks for continuous improvement process and feedback and thank you keep track of discord as well the conference sessions was overwhelming okay that's good to know love that it continues to be community driven good bagels always on your minds I agree good food in general cheetos one of the highlights of my week is my open ed 21 programming meetings I really like you folks you know what we like you to think purposefully about cultivating a student presence maybe we need to try and actively recruit a student panel or something that's that's not a bad idea maybe we can make a note of that for looking at proposals and and and where we get with that but that's an awesome idea student panels always they always end up being everyone's favorite so looking for great swag new sweaters need to give students cheetos you know what I bet they'd come if we gave them cheetos we need a new way to share our music with each other karaoke isn't the same online okay or for some newcomers make sense of where the conference fits okay it's hard to keep track of music moving open head 21 playlist program committee meeting to make my thursdays fully open space would help a lot so just like an open room comment previously about grants and funding maybe a way to network and highlight opportunities games trivia digital escape rooms there's some really great comments guys jeff said in the chat the reclaim crew seems to run karaoke very well through their own ds 106 and reclaim video platforms at other events think we're about ready to move on but if you have more comments please feel free to keep adding them there just to get in touch with us um but that's uh don't forget to follow at hey open ed um we have a twitter or facebook instagram and our official hashtag is hashtag open in 21 for this year so make sure to follow all of that stuff and our next meeting is on june 9th from 1 to 2 p.m eastern um or 17 to 18 utc it's weird to read for me sorry guys um yeah that's our next meeting i hope you guys um enjoyed this and got lots of information on it does anyone else have anything to add here from the steering committee no just thanks everybody for continuing to take the time to join these meetings and provide feedback really appreciate it very much and uh look forward to continuing the conversation yes thank you everyone