Monday, April 27, 2020

DigCitTO and the future of conferences

I presented at and attended a virtual conference on Saturday, April 18, 2020.
Often, when I attend conferences, I like to give a summary of what I learned and my experiences.
This will have a bit more reflection at the end.

You can see the list of speakers on their website, https://digcit.ca/

Saturday, April 18, 2020 - 9:00 a.m.

Community Welcome and Introduction to the Day

I don't know if anyone else has noticed a shift in their cicadian rhythms, but I find it difficult to wake up "early" in the morning. (This is a long-winded way of saying I slept through this part.)

Saturday, April 18, 2020 - 9:25 a.m.

Museums and Minecraft / Help! I'm new to online learning!

I think I might have been awake by this time but not actually mentally or physically ready to face the world, even when it's the world as mediated through my webcam!

Saturday, April 18, 2020 - 10:00 a.m.

Mental Health and Well-Being (panel) / Get O.E.M. Connected


By this time, I was finally ready to learn. I wanted to attend the OEM session (because I am part of the OEM team and I wanted to show support) but I couldn't get into the Zoom session. Instead, I joined the YouTube Live session. I was logged into my Gmail account that isn't associated with my YouTube channel, so I couldn't comment directly during the session so the moderator and presenter could see. Instead, I shared my comments in the Twittersphere.


There were lots of great points made during the panel about keeping an eye on your own personal mental health; Mandy advised the audience to conduct a "body scan" on ourselves because sometimes we are not aware we are holding in our stress inside our bodies. Jessica also said we should "choose our thoughts the way we choose our clothes" - that is, deliberately.

Saturday, April 18, 2020 - 10:35 a.m.

Supporting Digital Agency Through Media Literacy / Leveraging Social Media for Allyship

I was so sad that I had to miss the session on allyship but it couldn't be helped - after all, I was co-presenting! 


Quick tangent: I really want to be more like Jennifer Casa-Todd and Stephen Hurley, in that they do not yet adversity or errors prevent them from staying positive and carrying on. Jennifer occasionally forgot to unmute herself when she talked but this didn't stop her from continuing to facilitate sessions with a smile on her face. Stephen Hurley lost power in Milton as he was live-broadcasting the Zoom portion of the conference but maintained his composure, diagnosed the problem, and did what he could. I had been listening to the Mental Health and Wellness Panel through YouTube Live and I forgot to close this window when I entered the "Broadcast Booth" link for our YouTube Live link session. This caused a lot of audio feedback on my end as I heard myself twice, and it took precious minutes off our short presentation to learn of my mistake and rectify the situation. (Thank you Carlo Fusco for discovering the cause!) I continued with the presentation but internally I was beating myself up for the careless slip-up.

Big thanks to my co-presenter, Chelsea Attwell, who not only covered for me as I winced through my sound difficulties, but also stepped in and presented when my microphone conked out when I was supposed to talk - I had to exit my tab and re-enter, and Chelsea took care of things. She also ad-libbed when I realized I had taken too much air time and we needed some new voices and views.

Big thanks also go to Carol Arcus, vice-president of the AML, who was in the backchannel of the YouTube live presentation. Carol supplemented the presentation and unofficially helped moderate the comment section and did so with style.

The participants were engaged and themselves had such good insights to make that I was quite taken with their comments.

I should also thank Neil Andersen, who was the original source for the observation that the image that can be "read" from the top down or from the bottom up. Neil also provided post-conference feedback, which made me realize that I had forgotten to internalize the eighth key concept - when I had prepared the slide deck, I created it with the idea of having the images on the big screen as I presented. Instead, I was presenting on a small screen and my slides were shared alongside images of me and my moderators / co-presenters, which meant the visuals weren't seen as clearly due to their size.
This is a shame because there was an extra-important image shared with special permissions. I want to, once again, thank Brazilian artist Bruno Saggese for giving my permission to share his art as part of my presentation. Here's a short version of the story: I saw a visual tweeted by someone. I thought it was perfect to explain the Media Key Concept that media have economic implications. I wanted to use the image but I didn't just want to copy and paste it. My PLN came to my rescue; Sharla Serasanke Falodi did some internet detective work and found the name of the artist.
I found out how to contact the artist and we had a lovely conversation via Facebook Messenger. I explained that I was part of a non-profit organization, conducting a workshop for another non-profit organization and asked for three things: his permission to use the visual, his directions on how to cite it (if permission was granted) and a method of financially compensating him for the use of his art. He agreed to all three and we had an interesting conversation about artists and how things spread online.

Saturday, April 18, 2020 - 11:05 a.m.

Closing (Consolidation, Burning Questions, Next Steps)


The Menti poll was an excellent way to capture the feelings of the online attendees and thank the many people involved with transforming this conference into a virtual experience. There's a rumor going around certain parts of the Internet that I created the term "crisitunity" but I cannot take credit for it. That goes to a combination of the Chinese written language (see the above photo) and the Simpsons. 
This leads me to some further reflection. What is the future of conferences? Will they completely die out? Will there only be small venues? I'd be sad if there were no more big conferences for the foreseeable future. It's highly likely that Fan Expo Canada - my daughter's favourite place for cosplaying, panels, and pop-culture shopping from independent artists and crafters - will be cancelled. My son's favourite convention, Anime North, was cancelled. OLA SuperConference is accepting applications for their January 2021 event - but will it happen? Certain things can be replicated online but not other aspects. What might be the economic and social implications? The main reason I've seen every province except one (Saskatchewan) has been because of conferences. Conferences are great opportunities for me to learn and to meet with friends, despite the big price tag associated with going elsewhere for PD. I wish I had a crystal ball to foresee the future of conferences.
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