 meeting. This is so that we can share the meeting with the broader community on our YouTube afterwards. And with that, David, go ahead and take it away. Sounds good. Thank you so much, Winnie. Howdy, everybody. Welcome to the July 9th community meeting for the Open Ed 2021 conference. I hope you're all are doing well, staying safe in the weather. I know it's pretty wild, lots of places here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We're at the second version of the heat wave for the past little bit, so I'm trying to stay cool, stay hydrated, but welcome all to the meeting. We were expecting this would be a bit more small intimates. It's a very relaxed time or busy time depending on where you're at, but you're either in vacation or crunch time. So we're so excited that y'all could be here with us and join in today for the very fun conversation we have. We've got a couple cool things on the agenda. We have a bit of an operations update talking about the organizing process, the operating structure, some of the committees. We also have a lot of really cool questions about the future of the conference, what you're looking to see from the conference in the future, that sort of stuff. Sorry, loud cars outside, as well as some more of the nitty gritty stuff like what sort of communication platforms, that kind of thing. So stay tuned. There's going to be some really fun questions. To answer those questions, though, you are going to need to set up Menti. I'll post the link in the chat right here. That should work out for you as well. Or you could scan the QR code on the screen. Or third option, you can also go to Menti.com and type in the code at the very top up there. Reading it out for y'all, it is 4972198. So you can go to Menti.com and toss that in there or use the link or use the code. So there's quite a couple different options. So I know we had one person in the chat already say where they're coming from, but just out of curiosity, where is everybody joining us from today? I'm out here in Edmonton. I know we had somebody off in the Montreal area. Where else is everybody from today? Houston. Nice. Oklahoma. Cool. sunny Wisconsin. Not rainy Wisconsin today. sunny Wisconsin. I see a North Dakota in the chat too. Nice. Another Houston. Big Houston crowd today too. So I'll come back during the list. Nice, nice. Another Edmonton friend. I feel like I can guess who that is. I know we Edmonton folks do enjoy the OpenEd conference. So there's a pretty solid group of us here. So glad to hear where everybody's coming from today. For me, I've been watching a lot of TV recently. Kind of curious, what's everybody watching? What's your favorite show right now? I've been loving the new Loki show on Disney Plus. Definitely been a fun one. I've been really, really enjoying it so far. Last episode was that that is probably the best part of the entire show, in my opinion, as of yet. Community. That's always a good one. Grey's Anatomy. Nice. Nice. I see Schitt's Creek in the chat. That's a good one. That's a really good one. The Crown. Nice. The Boys. Flak. No TV. Honestly, fair. I know for me in the heatwave it was difficult because my TV is in the room with the windows. That was a rough spot for me. But also I know a lot of people are doing a good reading summer. So if you have any book recommendations too, I'd love to hear those for reading out through this summer. Yeah, there are a lot of good shows right now. A couple of Grey's Anatomies, which is really cool. So with that kind of informal side, I'd love to kind of pass it off to Daniel for a bit more of the operations updates. I know there's a couple cool things you're going to be talking about today. So right off that, could you kind of tell us a bit about the organizing process for those who might be joining for the first time? Awesome. Thanks so much, David. So howdy y'all. I'm Daniel Williamson. I'm the managing director for OpenStacks and I'm also one of the organizing partners for the OpenEd conference this year. So I want to just give everybody, for those of you who might be new and joining for the first time, a quick overview of how the conference is organized. So we are entering year two of a two-year commitment to kind of transition the OpenEd conference from its previous iteration to a community-driven, community-led version of that conference. So this started two years ago with four partners, Spark, the university system in Maryland, and the Colorado Department of Higher Education in addition to my organization OpenStacks. And there's really a dual focus with this transition period. So the first focus is on putting on a really amazing conference. We had an awesome one in 2020, and I know that 21 is going to be just as amazing. And in addition to just putting on a conference, we also have undertaken a strategic planning process for how we're actually going to run and transition this conference to being fully community-led. So a lot of that work is ongoing, and we're excited to see what comes of that and what next year looks like. So the other thing that in terms of how we are organizing is we have just tons of amazing support. There are dozens of other people involved in both the steering and all of our other program committees. So thank you all. If you were part of that, thank you so much. If you want to get involved, there will be opportunities in the future, I believe. But I want to just recognize the steering committee members. They meet regularly and help craft the agendas and make decisions about what's going to be incorporated into the conference and how we're going to structure it in the future. We also have our program committee that's hard at work right now. We're reviewing tons and tons of proposals and setting the theme and agenda for that. The DEI committee, the communications committee, it just goes on and on. And so thank you all for that. If you want to get involved, this is meant to be a conference that is run and organized by the community. And so in order for that to work, the community has to step up and take a leadership role there. So if you want to get involved, feel free to reach out to probably Winnie and Hayley on this call and they can help coordinate as well. We'll be putting in the chat a link to all the different planning teams. It looks like Winnie already threw that in. So stay tuned to future opportunities. So we're getting very close to the conference. We are going to be meeting virtually October 18th through the 22nd. Registration is now open. So you can go to openeducationconference.org slash 2021 slash registration and you'll be able to go ahead and register. Our standard rate for registration is $75 and our student rate is $25. But if anybody needs scholarships, we do have scholarships available. So those scholarships, we do give priority preference to folks who apply by, I believe August or yeah, August 13th. Rolling acceptances will happen after August 13th until October 1st. So there's an online application and I think it's the same link that we did. Well, there we go. Winnie already threw it in. So there you go. It's openeducationconference.org slash 2021 slash scholarships. If you are interested in getting a scholarship, please go ahead and apply and we'll be starting this in about acceptances August 13th. All right. Just a few more things. So we are in the midst of the proposal review process. We are planning to have the first round of reviews done today. But what's amazing is just the incredible response from the community. We've had over 300 proposals already. These proposals are going through a two step review process. So the first round of these reviews should be completed today. And our hope is to start sending out proposal acceptances by the end of July. Don't hold us to that. There's a lot to do and a lot of volunteers are working on doing that review. So keep tuned to your email. Keep watching us on social media and we'll make sure to let you know once those acceptances are released. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Hailey. And I just want to thank you all. Y'all are like the troopers, the ones who come in in the middle of the summer when everybody else is on vacation. So we know who the real, you know, the hardcore people are. So thank you all so much for joining. Hailey, over to you. Amazing. Thanks, Daniel. And want to convey that sentiment as well. Thanks everyone for being here and for being engaged. So for those of you who may not have encountered me, before, my name is obviously Hailey. I am an open education project manager with the Spark team. So I, along with my lovely colleague Winnie, work on sort of the operational side of the conference. Winnie has been looking after sort of the operations of the 2021 conference. And I've actually been working really closely with the Strategic Planning Committee to think about what things look like for us after 2021 and what's going to be happening to the conference in the future. So sort of from the top, we've been working with a consultant called Franklin Street Studios, who are a consultancy based out of Denver, Colorado, who have been working with us over the last few months to help build out a strategic vision for the conference, which is, we're sort of in the stages of wrapping up and we're looking at ways to go about consulting that with the community. So I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a second here. But the second piece is we're also going to be looking at building out some proposed organizational designs for the conference. So that is still in the works. But today we want to chat a little bit more sort of about that strategic vision and hear some input from all of you. So we have a few questions for you today, just sort of answer to the best of your ability. Some of them are a little bit more in depth than others. And I know we have a smaller group today, so that's totally fine. We'll just go through and hear what you think. Yeah, I did plug the mentee link in there again, so you are going to need mentee to participate in this section. Yeah, it helps us to have everything recorded in mentee. So I guess just broadly to kind of open us up, you know, as we're looking at the conference, we can think of this, you know, over the next two years, five years, 10 years, what have you, what does a successful future for this conference look like? In your opinion, you know, what are the what are the key elements that will be incorporated to have made this transition successful? So I'm seeing a couple answers come in already leads to a new phase in the open ed movement. Very interesting, smooth transition to the new team. I totally agree. I think that's going to be key, making sure that this new body, you know, has all the tools that they need in order to be successful. Alternatives for different sized institutions, okay, interesting, long term stability, sustainability. Continuing the community driven elements, I really think that's absolutely key. And it's something that we've really been focusing on, building out some of our mission and vision goals. Learners participating fully, growth in the community, ongoing programming through the year, broader international engagement, 100%. Another vote for international virtual and smaller in person regional conferences. Yeah, this would be the thing is, you know, as we move out of the pandemic as well, we've gotten into a really good group for this virtual conference, but you know, how can we expand past that if that's what the community is interested in? These are all really fantastic. Thank you so much. Great. Yeah, we could probably move on to the next one if there's no more. I saw one really quickly for more new attendees. And I totally agree the one beautiful thing about the virtual conference has been the ability to bring in more folks who may not have been otherwise able to attend. So I hope we can continue to build on that. Next question is building off of the last question. So if we were to think about this new vision for the conference, again, whether it's two year vision, five year, 10 year, whatever, and you can encapsulate that into a statement. You don't have to draft the statement right now, but what are some key elements that that vision statement might include? Whether that be key words, sentiments, as you sort of like, you know, if you took a minute to sort of close your eyes and imagine what this conference would be. What are some key things that stick out for you? Okay, so I see acknowledging the diversity of perspectives and open ed 100%. Continuous commitment to equity goals to leverage the knowledge gained from the conference into broader social change. Absolutely. So sort of like, you know, harnessing the power of all these, you know, different perspectives, commitment to equity. Amazing. So thrilled to see that. Oh, the link to UNESCO goals. So some questions. Why is open education important? What does it do? What do we want it to do? And then we can talk about what we actually do. Totally. Yeah, I 100% agree. And those are really tough questions to pin down. And to sort of come to common ground as a community, but they're, I think they're incredibly important discussions to have. Simple language. Yes, making sure that it's accessible to everyone who wants to take part. Great. This is very helpful. Thank you. I see some more support for diversity and accessibility. Amazing. And again, that international element. Awesome. Well, thanks, everyone. You can keep, as things come to you, you can, I think you can continue to submit when you correct me if I'm wrong, but we can, we can keep moving along for the sake of progress. Amazing. So yeah. Thank you so much for, you know, taking some time to think about that a little bit more. The next step for the strategic planning committee, you know, we're going to take a little bit more time to really polish up the draft that we have. But as we become ready to share that with the community and seek input, we're curious to know how all of you would like to be consulted. So some things that we've talked about include, you know, hosting, whether that be like a workshop or a drop in session, or, you know, some sort of opportunity for you to, you know, attend the meeting and give your feedback verbally. Or, you know, another option for us is finding a way to just sort of release the draft in text form and give folks an opportunity to, you know, just supply their edits directly onto the text. So this is more of a technical question, but just curious, you know, if those ideas resonate with you, or if you've got a totally different idea that you think we should utilize that would be of use to the community. Because, you know, if we're going to do the consultation, we want to make sure that we do it right. And we want to make sure that we're including, you know, all the rights, or all the voices, I shouldn't even say. So smaller ideation workshops, I think looks great. Surveys, focus groups, yeah, community calls, I think will be, community calls are a little bit trickier, because as I think as we move closer to the conference, we will continue to get some larger participation. Hopefully maybe that's what you're thinking. But so I think having a combination of all those things, I think is what's going to make us successful. But we'll definitely include that virtual sessions, small group sessions, asynchronous involvement. Yeah, I think that's key, having an option for asynchronous. Amazing. Thanks, everyone. Yeah, so we're, again, like I said, the committee's just starting to explore what this will look like. So keep an eye out. And of course, when it's time, when we're ready to begin consultation on that, we'll utilize sort of all of our channels to get that information out. So I know at the end, we've got a little bit of a plug for our social media channels. And of course, our email list. So encourage you to be subscribed to those, if you're interested in taking part in this and hearing about those opportunities. Oh, great. So I've read into my next question. So I guess lastly, as sort of a general question, we're curious to know, are there channels of communication that we have left untapped, I guess, so to speak. So we've, I know the open ed community is like very active on Twitter. We've been utilizing our mail list and trying to encourage folks to sign up that way. We have our other social media to open ed TikTok. I love it. Social media channels, but we're wondering if there are other ways, whether it be like specific listservs or just other channels that we're not fully utilizing that could help us make anyone who wants to be involved in this process feel welcome. So I'm seeing another bit of support for TikTok, non zoom video conferencing. Okay. I like that. Different organizations, newsletters, if you have like, if there are specific examples, we'd love to hear them. But I think this is, this is fantastic. Seeing some support for Discord. Yeah, we use Discord for the conference last year. And that was people really responded so positively. Awesome. Looks like we're gonna need to bring on a, oh, sorry, go ahead. I was just about to say that's so much TikTok. Great. It's wonderful. I guess we're gonna have to start learning some dances. That's what I was about to say. We're gonna have to bring on like a TikTok expert. Thinking about it though, like it honestly kind of makes a bit of sense because like it's, there's a lot of opportunity to like remix and reuse existing stuff. Like there's a weird overlap with the concepts of open ed through TikTok for oddly enough. Very interesting. I like that. Yeah, it's a great driver of traffic. That's for sure. So I mean anything to bring more of our people in. Also seeing GitHub and guest blog posts. Oh, very interesting idea for the conference committee. Yeah, we actually do guest blog posts during the conference, but it's something to consider before as well. That's great. Awesome. Great. Well, thanks everyone. We'll keep all these in mind. And again, if you, something comes to you later today and you've got, you know, some more ideas for any of these, feel free to update them in the sheet or, you know, reach out to us anytime, carry your pigeons. Yes, we are in. I love that. Great. Okay. Yeah, I think that's all for my discussion questions. We really appreciate everyone taking some time to think about that. And like I said, we'll have more details soon about the strat planning process in general and ways to be involved in that consultation. So keep an eye out. More to come soon. Great. And I think at this point I could probably hand it to, I think it's Tiffany to close us out. Yeah, so I just want to remind everyone to make sure that if you're not already, please follow us at Hey Open Ed for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. So we've included the URLs for that here. You can also go to each of those social media sites and just type in at Hey Open Ed and you'll find us. And then our official hashtag for the conference this year is hashtag Open Ed 21. We don't have a TikTok account yet. We'll have to explore that. I don't even have a personal TikTok account yet. So although my siblings, my sisters do like to send me things on Twitter from TikTok. So maybe I need to get with the program. I don't know. So do you want to move the slide forward? And our next meeting is going to be on August 13th, same time as always, one o'clock to 2 p.m. Eastern or 1700 to 1800 UTC. And there is a link in the chat for the August meeting. Thanks everyone for joining us. Thank you everyone for joining and providing feedback. Thanks y'all for coming up today. Thanks everyone.