 How do you feel differently about what we do, you know, this thing called educational technology as a field, if it is a field, and how we were doing it four years ago? Like, how does it change for you? Telling you, I mean, the reason why I was excited about the original vision of this article with the Main of One's Own is, I feel like Mary Washington just keeps on getting a lot of momentum with starting to think about educational technology as the platform with which we start interrogating questions like digital literacy on campus, what are the digital liberal arts, how does the notion of digital in all its kind of multifarious forms kind of cuts across disciplines and becomes a space where in the 21st century we really start to think about the production of knowledge, the interrogation of the information we get, how does visual culture play a huge part in how we understand the world, and how universities can start stepping up to that. So for me, I feel like with the path we're taking with the Main of One's Own that I'm really excited, but I also need a doomonger to kind of remind me that what's happening at UMW in some ways is a unique and fragile ecosystem that a lot of people maybe couldn't even imagine. And so I think this piece was really important in terms of the field of remembering like 15 years later or in 2008 when the whole edupunk thing broke and the question was where are we with innovation when it comes to the LMS. It's remarkable for me to step out of my bubble and realize, you know, for most people, you know, 15, 16 years after the kind of, you know, the ramping up of the LMS as a solution to the web, that that logic hasn't changed. You know, it's just become new and improved, but it still is a complete almost time capsule of instructional technology 15 years on. And I guess when I step out of what's happening at Mary Washington, it concerns me a bit. And I think a lot of that plays itself out in this article and the kind of excitement and joy that I'm feeling about ed tech, which I do on a daily basis, is saved for another space. And maybe that's a good thing. Yeah, I mean, I go back and forth. I have such a schizophrenic relationship to the field because I can look at stuff UMW is doing or we look at some of the stuff Cooney is doing or you read a Mike Caulfield post or Tony Hirston, one of his non-depressed days, and you can go or Martin Hoxie, Allen Levine, you know, all these kind of people doing cool stuff. And and the discourse on Twitter is lots of fun and it's inspiring. And it's really cool. And then and then there's all these other realities of dealing with things where, you know, for instance, at my home institution, I'm actually, you know, been tasked to come up with an LMS recommendation. And, you know, given the kind of stuff we wrote in the article, but what we think about LMS is that's just such a problematic space. But, you know, if I'm realistic, you know, I as much as I would love to have this dictatorial impulse and just kind of, you know, decree that the entire university has to completely transform how it views technology based on my preferences. I'm not quite sure I can ethically do it. But at the same time, I was at like, for example, just last week, I was at a conference, it was framed as an IT conference. And it was interesting because there were about 10 people who were framed as educational technologists and people were very explicitly talking about the educational technologists there as if they were a different group, like almost like a group of interlopers at this IT event, which almost surprised me. I guess it shouldn't because I guess I always kind of saw educational technology as somehow integrated both with IT and the academic elements of the university and that were kind of this hybrid space, but not really necessarily even a discipline in and of itself. But actually, when I was at that event last week, I was like, oh, no, that's not how the IT people see us. That's for sure. And then the event was such a strange event because honestly, and I'm not trying to, you know, be too critical of people just trying to do their jobs as they understand them. But, you know, there were like all, you know, I would say two thirds of the sessions really boiled down to the practice of information technology and higher ed as vendor procurement and vendor relations and and bidding and things like that. And I couldn't help but feel alienated and depressed just by that emphasis as much as any of the content of any of the actual sessions. Yeah, I mean, like I said, that's almost the reality I've been in some ways shielded from, but it's it is very telling that I went to Sloan Sea, for example, in early April, and I presented about Domain of One's Own and about this question of the early tilde spaces and the early web. And at the end of this hour long presentation where it just kind of opened up some questions of alternatives, you know, to a person, they raised their hand and they were like, what do you mean there's an alternative to the LMS? Like, can't we do that in the LMS? Like, how could you take away my life support system? And I was really frankly struck that that conversation, that argument still needs to be made so stridently. But I also think, and this is an idea that Tim Owens and Martha Burris and myself had as we went down to Atlanta recently, and talked about Domain of One's Own with Emory University is one of the things that came up is everything is discussed now in educational technology, if that is a field in relationship to the LMS. So in fact, that argument has become so monolithic, or that tool has become so monolithic, that it's not even like, if you try and do anything else, it's like, can't we do that in the LMS? It's like, everything is against the LMS or defined by the LMS. So everything else you actually talk about is like, well, but we can do that in the LMS or the LMS can't do that. So we can't do that. And I'm not necessarily against the LMS. The old joke is, I don't hate the LMS, I just feel better when it's not around is this notion that LMS in and of itself has some functioning. But the fact that it is so kind of dominated the conversation around all things educational technology is a real concern. And it's kind of why I think this question of innovation lost, right, this notion that we're not as a field really doing much besides or beyond what we're being sold by vendors is a real shame, because, you know, this is the space you would hope where educational institutions can make the most impact on a broad space through the public good. And when you're doing this all through the middleman of corporate vendors, much of the actual rationale or the reason for the field of being in the first place is lost.