 I was just going to say that you want to start the recording. One step ahead of you. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you all for for coming along to this community meeting. We're what. So welcome. And hopefully you will actually have the ability to actually give us your input by a mentor mentor. So again, if you can either grab the QR code from the screen or Haley's actually put in the link directly into the chat. This way it this way we can actually collect your your responses and then think through the feedback that you've given us for the planning as as we move ahead towards towards the conference in October. Thank you. Yeah. So again just an icebreaker question, which program. Where are you joining from state, whether you're in the states in Canada or different countries. Tennessee. Awesome. This is this is really nice. It's nice to see that we've got a range of places that we're logging into. So thank you for participating in this. And then the next thing is, if open it had a mascot, what would it be? Which particular animal, whatever. Somebody beat me to that one. Okay, there has to be some what's what's the backstory with this. It was the, the original snack for the new open ed was for Cheetos it had to do with that first conference and it's been going since then. Oh my gosh. That's it. No, no other. Yeah, I was going to say nobody wants to. That's that one. Oh, you know you never introduced yourself. Oh, sorry. My name is Alita part of the Garso I'm logging in from Ontario, Canada. This is my first time being on the board. And I'm learning as we proceed along so I'm very, very excited to be to be part of this and, you know, to load up my service component on my workload with this because this is a very important piece. And I will introduce myself I am Susan pain I am an education specialist at the Oregon Department of Education. So I'm in Oregon, and also excited to be on the board. Just want want to see him do you want to introduce yourself now or I'll just jump into a preview of our agenda today so we're going to give a brief operational update we're going to talk about the call for proposals hopefully you've seen that we and then we have a whole bunch of discussion questions because we want to get your input. And then we'll, we'll wrap up I will be surprised if we are here for a full hour. All right, so for our operations update. We are bored has been busy kind of getting some internal structures in place. We've established some operations roles and folks volunteered for those and then we also have some committees at this point we may add additional committees but we have for at this point so we have a program planning committee a program implementation committee, a community engagement committee and a finance team. And we have established co chairs for each of those committees. And we're really intentional about pairing new board members with a more experienced member. And so we are excited to get that program committee work started. And we are, we're over the next couple of weeks we're going to start looking at committee assignments in terms of volunteers so there's still time to sign up to volunteer and highly I think just put that in the chat. So please do grab that interest form if you want to volunteer and not and it's not just for committee work there's other other opportunities for volunteering as well. I just want to add one thing about the volunteering, the about the need for volunteers stretches out through the whole planning and then during the conference itself. And if you don't think that you can, if you can only maybe volunteer to participate during the conference. That's okay as part of the interest form just sort of indicate what your availability is. And then the other thing I wanted to say is that if you volunteer then it does form for those of us that have services part of our workload it does form. So the service requirements for for the institution. I know I'm going to put mine, very heavily under service so you can join us in that. So the next thing is call for proposals. It's a deadline is in 14 days time or two weeks. Haley again has been has has put the link for that. And the theme this year is rise to action. We also know that we were happy to. We're expecting a deluge of proposals closer to a date. So, again, please consider that and the conference is in in late October. So again, if you have that in mind, and it's an online only conference so again, it's something that you can actually work into into life in the fall semester. So we're going to open this up now to our community discussion and this is where your feedback and information is really really important to us. And I don't want to note that the mentor meter. So if you're watching this by a video, the mentor meter will be open for 14 days after this conversation so you do have the opportunity to contribute your ideas after the conversation is over as well. Just to quickly introduce myself I'm Sam veneroso I'm from Montgomery College in Maryland, and I serve on the board of directors for the open ed this year. And this right now or today is really to talk a bit about financing the conference, and sort of the communities feedback and thoughts around how we find finances conference. This is a community grassroots kind of conference. So, coming up with a funding structure that really supports it and allows it to be sustainable is super important, but it's also really important that we balance that we balance how we find fun the conference with the values and expectations of our community. If you want to go to the next one. So in order to keep that balance of keeping the conference affordable, while also making it sustainable and being fiscally responsible about it. There's some things that we want to talk about and get from you today. So your thoughts on what's an affordable rate. What concerns you might have around corporate sponsors if we are to take them suggestions for sponsorship models and comfort levels with with different sponsorship models. So how can we make sure those sponsors that we take have, if we take them that have values in line with the community, and then on the other thoughts that you might have about funding the conference or suggestions for funding. So our first question is, Susan. Yeah. My question is, what do you consider to be affordable for a general registration fee and keeping in mind that it's an online conference so there are, you know, for choices there this is a slider when you're giving your response. And, you know, really the question is about like, is there a point where it would be prohibitive for you to attend the conference. I think we want to move on to the next one if everybody's had a chance to answer that I hope there's not a lot of us here today. So, is this you, Aliyah. So, with everything else in life compromises P. So we just wanted to get an idea of the importance, the relative importance of before affordability or restriction of sponsorship. I think organizations who support our community. So, yeah, if you can actually use the slider scale to let us know, you know, what your comfort level is with affordability and sponsorship restriction. So in terms of the origin of the sponsorship we're going to explore that in a little bit more detail as the slides progress. So thank you for your answer with this. So, again, you know, toying around or teasing around with this idea of the balance between affordability and sponsorship. The next question is really kind of what is that balance in terms of what you're comfortable with. The balance is between sort of a higher cost for registration being one side and a lower cost for registration for the other. And then the different kinds of sponsorships so we were kind of trying to get your, your feel about where is your comfort level about the types of sponsors that we have. So we have vending from our funding from vendors or corporate sponsors or for profit institutions, funding from private or charitable or institutions, and funding from education, educational organizations. Where, where's the balance between those two things. You know, if you want the, the, we're really asking you where do you want to see the sponsorship coming from where should we be pursuing or limiting our seeking funding. So, you know, this conference has been generously sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation, and, you know, some other private donors for the past two years, and this is our first year sort of moving out of that protected funding and the the sort of organizations that put us together. So this is a really important question because in order to make this sustainable we really have to have a sense of, you know, where are we going to, how are we going to do that in an ongoing way. So if you want to move to the next question for us, Haley, that would be great. And so again, what are the strategies, sort of the same question but a different set of answers for us to look at if you can rank where you want to see the funding coming from to make this conference sustainable so corporate services would be for profit fundraising from individuals, private individuals private donations those kinds of things institutional sponsorships from nonprofit institutions, like educational institutions or other associations or things like that. We have charitable institutions who might be in line with our mission and then finally partnering with other organizations, nonprofit organizations. Thank you so much for that. We can move on to the next one. With that we've just been asking sort of more big picture questions this is an opportunity for you if you have any concerns about adopting a sponsorship model or which type of sponsorship model to adopt in order to actually fund the conference. So this is your chance to, to let us know what your concerns are. It's interesting because I'm, I'm going to a conference in a couple of weeks time. And so I think all the, and they do receive sponsorship from various organizations and it must be a two weeks before the start of the conference. I have emails from all these different sponsors of the conference that I'm going to in a couple of weeks so you know there's there's that to be balanced as well. I'll just I'll just pop in really quick to address one of the questions in the chat hi everyone my name is Kaylee Bab I'm an open education project manager with the spark team, who is supporting the conference. So in the past our main two funders have been, you know, the Hewlett Foundation and the 20 million Mines Foundation, which has been, you know, incredibly generous of both of those organizations. We haven't done any sort of outreach whatsoever to any other, you know, funding agencies so there haven't been any sort of conversations happening there outside of those funders that we already have. So I think, you know, just looking at, you know, the future of this conference and what it could be. How can we make it the most sustainable, you know, model possible. Just looking at, you know, what are the other possibilities that are out there. So, I think there's a very deep conversation to be had about, you know, the concept of aligning with values. And I can pop in the link in the chat really quickly. The strategic planning team last year did a lot of work to build out a strategic vision for the conference that outlines some of our values, etc. So, you know, keeping that in mind as we move through, I know will be will be top priority. So just wanted to chime in with some info. Finally, thanks for reminding us about the contribution of 20 million minds because that was a really important element of the conference last year. And that's an example of a charitable organization that might align with the interests of open ed, and want to contribute so that we did we have had some really, really generous funders in the past. And it's, you know, how do we maintain this, but still also make it affordable and accessible to a greater range of people. Okay, let's go ahead and move on. Yeah, good. Yes, our next question for you all is, if you have any suggestions about securing outside funding for the conference. I think that's something in the last question as a suggestion that maybe fits here which is that idea of taking advantage of open source technology to be able to host the conference, or to reduce costs, which is a great suggestion. And I will say that the misspelling in that question of conference is all on me, because I was typing too quickly. Good question. Good question. And I think there has been some conversation about you know what a membership models look like. And that would be part of the strategic planning long term planning question partnerships with specific schools is a great suggestion as well. I think we can probably transition to the general questions. Our first one is, what other more general questions do you still have that we could address at the next meeting, I think we've already seen some questions that have come up in in others that will definitely talk about as a board and and address next time but are there other things that you still have questions about. That's a good question about what does committee service look like. And are those, do you mean these meetings like the meeting that we're in right now, or the committee meetings. I think we can answer the first part of that this meeting is recorded is being recorded and will be available for community members to watch. That is a very good question about how we're going to deliver cheetos to all the attendees. The question about the committee meetings is up to the individual committee. I was part of the program committee last year we did not report meetings. But we did a lot of back channel information and communicated regularly via email. So if you couldn't attend the meeting you often were able to catch up there. I don't know about Susan's experience on committees last year. She might be able to share. The strategic planning committee. I, I feel like those meetings might have been recorded but Haley, I don't know. I'm happy to jump in so I'm actually not aware, we didn't record those strategic planning meetings. We did some work like with a consultant which there may have been aspects of that that were recorded I'm actually not 100% sure. But the standard committee meetings in the past we haven't recorded those. It's definitely something like if there's strong interest from the community and doing stuff like that. It's something to talk about. I think to go back to that first question, can you elaborate on what committee service for this conference looks like. I think it looks like a lot of different things depending on what committee you're sitting on. We had our board meeting this morning and we were talking about the, you know this question specifically about like you know which committees happen during what duration of the year. So for example, you know one of the first things that we're looking to gear up right now is the program committee to start reviewing the submissions from the call for proposals. But you know things like, like planning social activities during the conference that will happen a little bit later in the summer as we get closer to the date. So each committee has sort of a different mandate and a different time commitment depending on workload that we are in the process right now of drafting up what that will look like. So I hope that I hope that answers your question precedent is that the committee meetings are not recorded, but these community meetings these consultations that we have with the community. They are recorded and we post them on the open ed website afterwards for you to go back and do anytime. Haley there's a question in the chat about the total number of attendees and open and last year. Yeah, so last year so this is I love talking about this. It's been two years at the conference has been virtual we've actually more than doubled the attendance rate from when the conference was held in person, many years ago. So last year I think we had 1800 like presenters attendees like combined everybody who was involved in the conference. And that's just not to me I can't believe we were able to convene so many people. So very, very cool. I think you know the virtual aspect definitely does open a lot of doors for people and make it a little bit easier to come so yeah, yeah, we also had. Sorry, Haley we had people from around the world. So we had participants from countries throughout the, it was a global it was global in terms of our attendees. So maybe, I think that the bulk of participants tend to come from the United States and Canada, but they're definitely because of the virtual nature of it and we are thoughtful about trying to schedule it the best possible way so that it engenders participation times from around as widely as possible and proposals came from all over the world. We had, you know, just it was just a really great arrangement and I think that's Heather you on the open conference that the program from last year should be available so you can kind of get a sense of what kinds of things were available. Last year if that gives you some ideas for what you might like to participate in or propose. I also some of the recorded presentations from last year are available Haley can talk about whether they're still available, but we tend to try to release them like we released all of the recordings from last year's proceedings to during open ed week in the spring. So there is that database of things available to. Thank you so that's on the website you said. Yeah, so I'm just I'm just popping the link in the chat. So the recordings from the 2020 and the 2021 conference are available on our website so if you go to open education conference.org. There's the participate tab at the very top. And you'll see 2021 conference and 2020 conference and I'm also just simultaneously linking those in the chat for us. Feel free to peruse those and get a sense of what past years have been like. Thanks. And it's, I mean, it's, you know, my experience because I mean Antonja can also talk a little bit about her experience and I think, you know, we've, I've been attending the conference since it was in person back in 2000, I don't know, ages ago, in history. And so at, you know, the online engagement has been wonderful and you know there's a, there's a back channel through discord so there's sort of the synchronous piece of it as well as the asynchronous piece. The conference proceedings are synchronous but then some of them are reported so they're available at different points and so there's a lot of ability to engage regardless of kind of where you are and Susan and Elita are the program chairs this year so they can talk a little bit more maybe about their thoughts on the program. Okay, so we can talk a little bit more about the in person stuff for the next time around. Any other questions that you guys and Heather welcome to the community, we're glad to have you. Maybe move forward toward wrapping up today. Again, this Mentimeter will be available and this recording will be available for 14 days after this. So, so if you're watching this as a recording you can jump in on these questions, because we really do want your feedback and we're trying to get as much feedback particularly around funding and making sure that this conference continues to align with the values of the community. So do if you're interested in participating depending on which which which committee you're part of there's different levels of engagement and different points of engagement as we said earlier. Right now there are four committees that have been formed one is reviewing proposals. One is, or the program committee sort of setting up the whole program and looking at the proposals and that kind of stuff there's a implementation focus in more on the actual that's involved of the conference itself. And those two committees will work together there's a finance committee and then there's a community engagement committee. So if you're interested in any of those, those are the four that we're, we're rolling out right now. And they have different levels of engagement needed. There's a link in the chat. And we would love to have you. I have a question to about if someone wanted to change something about what they already put on the forum. Really is the best thing for them to do is to just fill it out again or what's the best way for them to let us know. That's a great question, I would say probably go ahead and fill the form out again. And then maybe just put a note at the bottom of your application, just to say that you know I filled this out once before please use this as the, as the primary one and we can also you know see names. It just gets populated in the spreadsheet so we'll be able to have a time attached to when you fill that out. Thank you. So we're about to wrap up now I see that we had a couple people join us a little bit after we started we're happy to have you here. This whole program will be or this whole meeting will be reported and available via link and then the questions that we asked, you can continue to answer those questions in the mentor for 14 days after today so for the next couple of weeks, and it is, we're happy to have you, and happy to see you here. If you want to advance to our very last piece. Our next community meeting will be the same time, June 10, and we will be, we are committed to having monthly community meetings with a different focus each time, and trying to engage in what you want to hear about I think we're all really really committed to this being a community based conference. And I think that's it if you want to continue to follow up the dates are October 17 through October 20. It will be virtual. You can follow hashtag open at 22 on Twitter, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram and the at hey open, Ed opened is the is the general handle on each of the social media sites. So we look forward to seeing you there and engaging with you there. If you have thoughts or questions we are happy to have them. And we're really glad for your time today. Any other thoughts, Tonya or Haley or Susan or leader. Thank you. Yeah, thanks everyone for coming this the recording of this will be posted on the open ed website. If you go under the participate tab is a link for the community meetings and he'll be able to access this so we'll get that posted as soon as possible. Thanks everyone for coming and have a fantastic weekend. Yep. Thank you. Take care.