 Okay, well, welcome everyone. I'm going to maybe start my video since there's so few of us. We appreciate everyone who's here today. I don't know if I started my video or not. It looks like I did. But I can't see it. Yeah, we can see you. Okay. There we go. Thank you. Now I can see myself. So welcome. We're welcome to the October community meeting. On behalf of the steering committee, we are so excited that you were able to join us today. And it's probably going to be a brief meeting since we have only a few people signed up and joining us today. So we'll keep it brief. And as usual, we're going to use Mentimeter to get some feedback. And you all probably know the drill. So if you want to participate on menti.com by entering the code 65738602, please do. And it's also in the chat. If you want to click on that. And so for our first question, we always like to know where everyone is joining us from. Oh, and I forget to do them agenda. I did, I skipped the agenda. So, so today's agenda. We're going to have an operations update. We're also going to hear about the program update and a very brief strategic planning update. So now we can move to mentee and see where everybody is from. Wow, I'm not going to be able to pronounce that I'm going to need some help with that with pronunciation on that. Oklahoma, Illinois, Florida. I'm still in Houston, Texas, where the weather, the humidity has dropped so we might be able to continue living here. We'll see. Montreal. Awesome. Okay, wonderful. So just a little icebreaker. What's your favorite season. Two votes for fall, and it's fall it's almost fall I mean, unofficially it's fall right. I know that I'm. Some of us are super excited for all the things pumpkin spice. So it falls winning one winter. Okay, well I'm going to hand it over to Nicole Allen to give us an update on planning. All right, I can kick us off. So hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for the opening of the conference operations team for those just joining us for the first time at one of these meetings we always like to sort of start at the beginning give a little bit of context of the organizing structure for the open ed conference for this year. And last year. So, I guess after 2019 for organization step forward to support the organizing process for the open ed conference going forward. The operations were open stacks spark the university system of Maryland and the Colorado Department of higher ed. We are nearing the end of our two year commitment, which was to both organize the 2020 and 2021 conferences, and also support a community driven planning process that would help design the future of the conference going forward, and we'll get a little bit on the planning process a little bit later on. And next up. I want to make sure to acknowledge that, although the four organizations are the, I guess, originally set forward to support the conference, the organizing of the conference is actually involved, a wide number of community members participating in a lot of different ways. We have an addition to the steering committee we have five standing committees that are focused on different aspects of the conference organizing process we had about 100 people involved in the proposal review process. And we're also going to be putting out a call pretty soon for volunteers to help out with some of the work that needs to get done and lead up to the conference and during the conference. So I think the power of the way this is structured it just involves a lot of different voices and making decisions, and we're really excited to build on the model that the conference used in 2020 to make this year even better. So I think I'm going to pass it off here to Asia. Hello everyone. As a reminder, registration is open and the conference will be taking place from October 18 to the 22nd and it's all virtual. The standard rates right now is $75 and for students, it is $25 but we have scholarships available for anyone who that cost might be a barrier to attendance. So the link for registration and scholarships will be put into the chat and scholarships are reviewed on a rolling basis and you should typically hear a response within a week or so. If you were accepted or not so strongly encourage you all to apply. If you need to do so and to spread the word. And then moving on to program updates. So all the proposals have been submitted and accepted, and we have over 200 live and pre recorded sessions. And this was all a community driven review process so a lot of community members stepped up and help we had a lot of proposal reviewers so thank you all for those who have helped. There's a lot of different topics that range across the different topics we have, and they are relate back to open education, which, which you can check out on the schedule which is also put on the chat. So the schedule is now live, and you can see the layout for everything and even for the fun activities that we have planned. And you can build your schedule if you're already registered, you can go ahead and start building your schedule. So that's all very exciting and we strongly encourage you to register early so you can get your schedule all planned out. Now be passing it off to Haley for an update on the strategic planning process. Sure. Thank you so much, Aisha, and everyone. I just wanted to hop on and give a quick update about the strategic planning process, as it's going right now so obviously we did hold our public consultation on the strategic vision. And for a little over three weeks, and the period has officially closed as of last Friday so I just wanted to say an enormous thank you to everyone who took the time to review it and add their perspectives to help make this better and just more reflective of, you know this community as a whole so very very grateful to everyone who was a part of that process and took the time to engage with us. So our committee is going to be reviewing some of the suggested changes and sort of synthesizing that into a document soon. So we don't have a specific deadline for that but we're working to make sure that that's completed as soon as possible. So we'll be communicating with all of you through our regular channels, be it our social media on our website through our mailing list to let you know when that's available and we'll certainly be sharing both the public, the revised document and sort of a summary of our changes with you soon so keep your eyes peeled for that. In terms of next steps, our committee is still formulating you know how exactly engagement with the community is going to look at the conference. So they've been working sort of diligently to put this together and make sure that we have, you know, a very meaningful and substantive way for you to engage with us at the conference. We're not quite ready to share that with you yet. But by our next meeting, we're very excited to be bringing you an update on what that's going to look like so again, stay tuned. We'll have more information for you soon and in the meantime just thank you so much for being part of this community and yeah helping us to build something great together very appreciative. Right. See if I can go to the next slide here. So we did just have a couple really quick questions that we wanted to ask today. I know it's a little bit of a smaller group, which is totally cool. But just as we sort of gear up to the conference, we're starting to plan out some of the fun stuff, some of the engagement that's going to be happening throughout the conference so we're interested to hear what sort of events you would like to talk about at open ed 21 so aside from the conference programming itself. How can we facilitate some of those social connections and ensure that everyone has a fun time as well as an educational time at the conference. So some interesting suggestions roll in language exchange interested to hear more about that one that sounds super interesting open mic. Yoga yeah we had a lot of people who are thrilled about the yoga that we did last year. And it was definitely super awesome karaoke a classic. So karaoke has come a long way since the start of start of the pandemic. Great. And then yeah a really great suggestion just in here now facilitating networking small tables and afterward combos that was definitely something that we heard last year is just being able to continue the conversation after session so Thank you for that circle of quiet dance contest. And yeah cool would love to hear more about some of those suggestions but I think I'll move us along for now. And our last question is just sort of more open ended we just wanted to have an opportunity for you to share, you know any other questions or feedback that you might have for us today. Happy to sort of take anything that might be lingering. But of course you can always reach out to us as well. Oh sorry go ahead. Yeah I was going to just say, um, we usually keep minty open right for a little while after the meeting so other people who weren't able to attend are able to give us suggestions is that that correct. I believe so yeah I think we can, we can definitely leave it open for at least a couple days of people who would like to submit some questions or feedback in general. Yes I think the question on everyone's minds. Again, sort of like we talked about earlier we're really hoping to have a more substantive update by the next meeting. It's something that we're working really hard to address and you know make sure we're making the best decisions possible for the growth of the conference so so do stay tuned. Yes, and just to add to that speaking from the, I guess, the person from the organizations currently supporting the conference like we're committed to, you know helping the conference through that transition so it's not like we just disappear. Well, it's obviously up to the committee to make the decision on sort of how that process works and where things go. But, you know, we're very much committed to making sure that there's a smooth transit transition. Perfect thanks Nicole. Great okay we'll seeing no other questions I think I'll just move us along. And I think we've got another committee member who's going to wrap us up. And take us take us through Ethan. Oh man well I'm happy to I'm happy to continue on the, on the presentation so just I guess for everyone, for everyone's information, our next meeting is going to be October eight at 1pm Eastern so the same same time slot as we have now. This is our last community meeting before the conference, which is just, wow I can't believe it's come so fast so be sure to join us for that one. And then, as always, for updates on any of these processes, you know anything that's going on just be sure that you're subscribed to our social media. And as well as our mailing list which I'm sure we have a link to available somewhere. But yeah, stay tuned we're going to be sort of ramping up on our announcements as we enter sort of the six week to a month period before the conference so. I can't wait to welcome you can't believe it's coming up so quickly and hope everyone has a wonderful start to your semester.