 Hi everyone. Welcome. My name is Regina Gong and I am one of the members of the open ed steering committee. I would like to warmly extend welcome to you all to our first ever virtual open ed conference. I would like to begin by acknowledging the indigenous peoples of all the lands that we are on today. While we meet today on a virtual platform, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the importance of the lands which we each call home. And what a year this has been. We are living through this unprecedented challenging and difficult times brought about by this pandemic. So I hope you and your loved ones are safe and well. It is the 17th year of open ed and so far this is the biggest with about 1400 people registered. And this is also the first ever community driven and community led open ed conference. In the opening session, members of the steering committee will talk about our journey and how this conference has come to be. We will also talk about important things you need to know to make sure that you get the best possible conference experience ever. And I hope this online space we are sharing becomes that place where you all could find inspiration, learn new ideas, forge connections and build the community anchored in compassion, concern and care. That is my hope and I'm so excited to experience the awesomeness of this conference with you all. And so now I'll turn you over to Jasmine Roberts, who will talk about this year's theme. Hi Jasmine. Hi Regina. Isn't it so great that Regina just kicked us off. All right, let's get into the conference theme which is reimagining open education. So, when the steering committee, finally decided on what the theme would be for this year's conference which again was heavily influenced by previous community calls I was pleased to see that this is what we landed on. I was also pleased to hear that at least within my respective networks, the response was pretty positive once the conference theme was announced. The steering committee agreed that it was a pretty solid theme for our conference because it's so timely. And honestly, it really is a call to action to address some of our most pressing issues in education that, you know, simply cannot wait. So it's really about holding ourselves accountable, being malleable if you will, and really making sure that we're we're truly serving the communities that we claim to to serve and to embody this community driven approach one that addresses social justice of course, inclusion, and that addresses structural inequities, right, and so much more instead of taking more of a, you know, savior approach right and so open education more specifically has been presented as a solution to some educational problems, mainly at least in the mainstream public discourse, problems related to accessibility and textbook costs. And although, you know, a great deal has been accomplished in the in that realm, I think it's really time for us to, you know, have a critical reflection right and think about, you know, tangible actions that we can actively engage in within our, you know, respective education systems. And so this means again to address the inequities that we see amplified unfortunately because, you know, we're all going through a global pandemic. And in the West context context or excuse me the Western context we are going through a racial reckoning where we really have to intentionally address issues related to systemic racism. And so since education as a whole is being in a way forced to redefine its purpose, because of these external circumstances. This is also an opportunity for, you know, us and open education to reposition and try to answer some some really tough questions and problems. So during our time at the conference throughout the week. I want us to really ponder and think about the promise of open education that education should be affordable should be accessible, inclusive and equitable to everyone and how we really should be relentless or relentless excuse me in using an equity diversity inclusion approach, as well as a social justice approach as well. And so open education advocates and supporters alike, we really can't you know shy away from this promise we can't shy away from, you know, centering this social justice framework, because the promise of open education in of itself is radical right, in society where there are structures in place to prevent us from realizing such. And so we're not only looking externally or outwardly. We're also looking inward right and more specifically at the conference experience. And so some of us tuning in right now this is your first open ed, which that that really excites me. Others tuning in this, you know, this might be your fifth, sixth, 10th open ed conference. And so we we've listened to the community's feedback we've listened to it a lot actually. And many of you have voiced that you know you would want a conference that moves away from this notion that it's the premier conference where you share ideas about open education from it really being a hands on experience right where we can get our hands dirty. You will and apply some of this this discourse to our respective situations so just to kind of wrap this up our hope is that reimagining the conference experience can point more directly to certain learning outcomes. And that you know we can truly actually apply a lot of this this rich discourse that we are engaging in. So with that being said, all that in mind I'm going to go ahead and pass it over to Daniel who's going to talk about his experience in this process from specifically an international perspective. Thank you just mean for the introduction and good morning everyone, although I'm sitting here in Pakistan it's a night time over here, but I'm glad. I believe that this is the beauty and this is the beauty of the notion of collaboration being able to co create and co think about different perspectives of education, while sitting in different time zones across the world. So myself I am currently working with the academic sector I have been working with the, with the government sector on the national as well as on the national level from the last couple of years. I'm really grateful to this community of advocates of open education and experts because of whom I have been able to replicate and implement implement on the local level, the values and the principles of open education here in Pakistan and all those platforms which are on the regional level. So, thanks, thanks to all this community doing process, specifically from the perspective of open education conference 2020, which I believe I have been a steering committee member I have been more on the learning part rather than the contribution part but I think that this is all about learning this is all about co creating and co contributing which which empowers the notion of you want to on which I strongly believe I am, because we are, and I think this is a co with 19 empowers that to so education in the perspective of developing country like Pakistan or India or Bangladesh or the other South Asian or the African countries. Jasmine mentioned that open education has been posed as a solution to certain aspects of education but I would say that in a developing countries contacts. It is something that it has become a very basic solution to majority of the challenges that we have over here right now, especially in times like co with 19 where people do not have access to the Internet, where people that mission fees are high the books buying people are not able to buy books were here, so open education I see it as a very strong solution to that. So, I won't be taking long, but I would rather submit up over here by thanking everyone, all the participants all my fellow state committee members and all the volunteers who are who are now successfully successfully conducting this conference today. So thank you. I will now hand over to a concha will be talking about the code of conductor here. Hi, everyone. So my name is the king said like Daniel just said, it's super exciting to finally have this conference going. I'm calling in from Ottawa, Canada, which is pretty exciting to be a Canadian in this field. I started off my journey with open ed as a student at the University of Alberta, but I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about the code of conduct so this is our first time doing this conference online which is super exciting and we want to make sure that everything goes as smoothly and as well as in that you're able to participate to the fullest of extents. And we do know that some of these conversations we're going to have we're going to be really passionate and once that are filled with a lot of conversations so make sure that you have checked out the code of conduct and if you haven't yet. Please feel free to check it out on our website which I'll link in the chat right away here and if you haven't checked your emails it's also going to be in there so at any point throughout the conference if you have any comments or questions or if you want to submit something, please feel free to email conduct at openeducationconference.org and your four code of conduct officers will be ready to sort of respond to you and those people are Spencer Ellis, Amy Tan, myself and David Draper. And it really is such an honor to be able to do this role and to be able to help facilitate these kind of conversations we want to make sure that you are just having the greatest time that you can while you're here. So, doing so in a safe environment so please feel free to reach out at any given point. If you have any questions and thank you for me for just linking that conversation in the chat box below so thanks everyone and I will pass it over to one of my colleagues over here. I'm just pulling up our slide deck for someone running a conference it's going to be Emily and there we go. Hello, I'm Emily Reagan I'm joining you from Denver and I'm going to tell you about our exciting program. So we have five full days of programming and this map kind of gives us a visual overview of the different spaces here in the conference. We're going to have almost 125 minute and 55 minute synchronous sessions and those are grouped together and 90 minute concurrent session blocks. So we've got one area listed here showing the concurrent sessions. We also have a slate of excellent excellent lightning talks and other asynchronous content that's in the showcase gallery. The lightning talks are about 10 minutes long they're available on demand so sketch has them listed in groups of about 20 talks at the end of the day, but you can watch them at any time so please do check those out. And one note is that I'm going to give all the times in eastern time but you can set up sketch to have your local time as the conference time listed. So working with the 90 minute blocks after our 90 minute concurrent session blocks or the plenary 90 minute blocks there's tea times daily at 1130, 130, 330 and 530 and so those are going to be times for you to get a little rest and nourishment to rejuvenate yourselves. Today at 530 will have our opening reception and the closing session on Friday will follow the 330 tea time. After I get done telling you about the programming will hear a little bit more about the spaces to connect. So more on those coming up next. There's also a welcome desk that you can go to for help. Okay, so as we go back there's really I love the previous slide here. Nicole, if you don't mind just going back. Thank you. I just love. I love our schedule it's very, I think beautiful because it varies every day but there's elements there in common. So I hope many of you caught the early show and I know I think over 100 of you did this morning at 930 it's hosted by the delightful Amy Tan from Houston Community College. And so be sure to check that out. It's going to be offered every single day of the conference I'm going to be leading a late show Monday through Thursday and so that starts at 7pm Eastern. We're going to get a little chance to reflect on the day's programming for everyone to share out some highlights and to hear from some of the people who made this conference possible. So the 90 minute plenary sessions are really exciting. And just please note that those times vary depending on the conference day so today from 12 to 130. We're going to have a chance to explore what open education means to us. So I'm really looking forward to this exciting and innovative session. In a row, the plenary time is 10 to 1130. And we'll hear from Mahabali and Mia Zamora about equitable emergence, telling the story of equity unbound in the open. So it's a chance for us to all learn about the co creation of an open community on Wednesday from two to about 330. Two keynotes about applications of open education during the COVID-19 pandemic, one from Harrison Keeler who's the state of Texas commissioner of higher education, and the other from Sharon Lou, the US Department of Education she's a senior policy advisor there. Then on Thursday, our plenary will take place from four to about 530 and that one also consists of two keynotes. This time on the very important topic of applications of open education and social justice inclusion and anti racism. So we'll hear from Jacqueline Michelle Amaya who's the associate vice provost at the Ohio State University, and her talk is going to examine how open educational resources can better facilitate accessible and inclusive ways of learning by disrupting the norm. And then we'll also hear from Jesse lawyer a librarian and associate professor at Mount Royal University, who will explore how open education can support land back and other indigenous sovereignty movements. And then finally, our Friday plenary will give us a chance to explore the future of open education together and that one will take place from 12 to 130. Oh, so that's a lot. I want to give a huge thank you to the program team and all of the additional volunteers who reviewed session proposals. And a big thank you to everyone who submitted sessions. We have just such a phenomenal slate this year and I'm super excited that we're getting going and the programming can be watched live. There's things we're going to be recorded so there's going to be a lot of chance to soak up all this awesome content. And of course, another important reason that we're here is to connect with folks involved with open education. Really, we want to build those relationships and connect. And so I'm going to turn it over to Tiffany who's going to tell us a little bit more about the social spaces. Hi, I'm Tiffany calling in from Athens, Georgia. And yeah, the what if Nicole wants to move the slide over real quick. Just so you can see the beautiful graphics. So we have, we have to, I guess, we have lots of different ways to get social this during the conference honestly but the two sort of main social media pieces are going to be discord and Twitter. Twitter, I think anyone who has attended open ed before that is where we tend to end up when we're, you know, sharing things about honestly about anything in general for open ed but but this year we've added a discord server where we can all just kind of be together as a community. And we've got lots of channels set up there so we've got places for you to meet just kind of in general so we've got a virtual venue area with different channels, themed off of a typical conference venue. So I'm curious to talk about the different program topics, and, and then we also have just some places to just kind of talk about social stuff I mean share your pets and, you know, share your favorite taco recipes and things like that. There's a lot of fun stuff going on there. There is some social programming over there. So I definitely recommend checking that out. And here's actually I'll put a link here in the chat for joining if you have not yet. And it looks like we also have in the chat that there is a deeper dive into discord right after this so I'm in Nicole wants to skip sorry never mind I'm going to stop reading chats there's too many. But yeah so there's there's lots of different ways to get involved though definitely recommend getting hopping on discord and joining us there. And I'm passing it to. Amy with a quick update on technology. Thank you, sorry. I'll be super quick just to remind everybody that you have to log into schedule set sketch I can't say that said sketch. You should have received multiple emails and you can reset your password. Please reach out to the help desk if you have any trouble. And just to know that when you click on the link for zoom that you will be asked to enter your first name and your email address and you'll immediately have access to the room so enjoy the conference and Spencer is up next. Thanks Amy. So this was a very collaborative effort. The most and dare I say the most democratic conference I've ever been a part of for certain. And, you know, the community held a series of open community calls, and a few organizations emerged to help chart this course. This included spark open stacks University of Maryland system and my organization the Colorado Department of Fire Education. But there were so many other people involved in those conversations and in those community calls. And as the four of our organizations came together. We had to face the harsh reality of 2020 that we're all facing at the outset of planning this conference. We had initially planned to host this conference here in Colorado and Denver. And we'd still also like to welcome you here one day so you all are welcome to Colorado one day. However, thanks to this extensive network of volunteers and community partners that were all interested in making this conference a success. We're able to move this conference to a comprehensive virtual experience. And this includes involvement from dozens of volunteers on several committees addressing everything from content to online experience, representing perspectives from every functional area and many states provinces and countries. And I think it all shows when you review the content ahead of this week. It's so very exciting if you take a look at all the different dimensions this conference have to offer. Thank you all to to those of you who have contributed thus far and I'm so excited to continue to build enthusiasm for involvement. With that I'm passing to Daniel to tell us a little bit more about what's coming in the future. Excellent. Well thanks Spencer good morning everybody my name is Daniel Williamson and I am the managing director for open stacks. Open stacks has been serving as the fiscal and legal lead for the conference this year. And it has been just truly amazing to work with all of these great people on this amazing conference. I'm so excited to be here. And while we're just now starting, you know, to get into this 2020 open ed conference, we're already starting to work on the details for next year. So unfortunately cannot join us this morning in J Bishop from the University of Maryland has agreed a local host for next year. And while we still don't know exactly what's what next year's conference will look like whether it be in person or remote or some sort of hybrid. We are excited to see the amazing momentum continue to build for open ed, and we look forward to what next year holds for our community. Okay, I want to give a huge shout out to a couple of organizations that we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude running a conference of this scope takes time, a ton of energy, and frankly, a ton of money. Thank you for the Hewlett Foundation and the 20, Michelson 20 and then foundation made it financially possible for us to gather through this week, and we really could not have done it without their generous support so thank you both. Thank you to those organizations for sponsoring open ed 2020. And now I'd like to hand it over to Nicole. All right. Thanks so much. So I just wanted to make sure that we acknowledge all of the different people who are involved in planning this conference. So sparks role in the planning process has been on the operation side of things myself and other members of the Spark team, Haley Mo Winnie have been working over the past months with members of the steering committee who signed on to work on this and February, before we knew sort of how this year was going to turn out. We have the five volunteer teams that have been driving the conference program team the DEI team online team the comms team the future of open ed team. They've been meeting weekly since July, helping to plan different aspects of this conference, and make it a special and engaging process for you. I also want to make sure to acknowledge that there's close to 100 people were involved in the proposal review process over 100 volunteer hours went into choosing the selections that you're going to be able to attend this week. There's also a ton of community members who are involved in helping to put on this conference there's going to be somebody in every session helping to run the zoom meeting and monitoring on the basis of the code of conduct. You know, really recognize that this is truly, it's taken a village to organize this conference and we're really excited for all of you to be here to help put it on with us and contribute to it and encourage you to participate. And, and, and every way you're excited to and maybe try out some new things while you're here. So with that, I will pass it to Lee to quickly close us out. Hi everybody. So a little bit about the future of open education for the conference strategic planning is in process for the future of the open ed conference. The ultimate goal is to identify how open ed might contribute to make the open education field more diverse, equitable and inclusive. As a reminder, like Emily stated, Friday's plan area session will provide important important input from the community for this process so we encourage you to participate in that session. Also please stay tuned for future community calls after the conference for more updates and opportunities to provide feedback. And with that, I will pass it over to Ethan to wrap us up. Awesome. Thanks Lee. So really quickly just to send us all on our way. The next hour of the program will be breakout sessions so this is all in sked so you can see more about it there but for the next hour you can use this as a chance to see some of our view anytime content. There's an introduction and an orientation to open education. You can join a get to know discord workshop, and you can do some speed networking. Normally, you know folks would have a chance to meet people at the breakfast table or at the lunch table. And so we wanted to build in some time for you to get to know folks and meet some new people while you're here with the conference. We are going to be back at noon Eastern for an interactive plenary. So that'll be the opening session, and then we'll break out into breakout rooms, and then this afternoon will be in concurrent sessions. So you can see all of the different options for that in in sked. So with that said, I just want to say how thrilled, we all are to dive into this amazing program. So if you have any questions, please feel free to call on your way. I'm going to ask the steering committee members to quickly unmute and say a quick goodbye to get you all started today. Have a great conference.