Today I want to write about one of those "hallway moments" that people often mention with regard to conferences... although in this case, it was a food tent moment! After the engineering panel, it was time for lunch, so I found myself standing in line at the food tent, and I started a conversation with the person standing next to me. I thought I recognized his name -- @g_r_saward -- and sure enough, he had chimed in here at the Community, and that is how I knew his name. Although it was just a brief conversation , we had previously had a back-and-forth in the global search discussion, which is why his name left a lasting impression.
So there we were with lunch on our paper plates and plenty of time before Jared Stein's keynote, so we walked back to the conference center and proceeded to spend the lunch break in a lovely conversation. He is from the U.K., so there were all kinds of things to compare/contrast and discuss, and he was also interested in project-based learning, all the dilemmas in providing good student support and feedback as students work on extended projects, etc. etc. LOTS to talk about. It was a complete pleasure, and I cannot think of any circumstances other than InstructureCon where Guy and I could have had such a nice encounter face to face.
We planned to meet up again at the UnConference, and I actually saw him in the hallway there at one point, but then when I went to talk to him afterwards, he had already left -- and had left his computer, as we discoverd later. I hope Guy and his computer were reunited before he headed back to the U.K.!
And that leads me to my general question here: how do we carry on connecting after the face-to-face moment is over? In Guy's case, we happened to need to contact him urgently that Friday afternoon to tell him we had found his computer (we emailed, since no one had his phone number; I really hope that reached him before he headed out of Keystone...) -- and now here it is in August, and I am hoping that I will get to learn more about what Guy is up to and how his school year is going, his school's Canvas adventures, etc.
Maybe that will happen here at Canvas Community (which is definitely a place to build your PLN in addition to asking questions about Canvas features), or maybe at Twitter (Twitter is very chaotic, but I've got Guy on a list so hopefully I will catch any tweets to come from @guy75)... or maybe at Guy's blog...!
And how do I know he has a blog? Because of something really charming he mentioned during our conversation: he had started a blog, but found he didn't have time for it. I hear that from people all the time of course... but Guy had a great acronym for it. Instead of tl;dr, his problem was tl;cw -- too long, can't write. I'm not sure where his blog lives on the web, but if he does revive it, I will read it! 🙂
Meanwhile, I'll be blogging here at the Community. I don't have time to blog, it's true... but I also don't have time NOT to blog, if you see what I mean. By blogging here at Canvas Community over the past two years (my Community-versary is coming up: I jointed August 15, 2016), I've built up a body of reference material that helps me in my work, saving me from reinventing my own wheel ha ha, and also making it possible to share my work with others. It sometimes takes time to save time, and that is how I see blogging time. I cannot imagine being a teacher without a blog.
And listen: you can blog right here at the Community if you want. Just go to the any of the group areas to see where your work fits best, and create a blog post. There are instructions for how to do that here:
How do I create a blog post?
Do you have ideas you want to save from InstructureCon? Then blog right here in the InstructureCon 2018 area! There are 78 blog posts in the InstructureCon area right now (here are mine), with room for an infinite number more! There's always room for more blogging...
So, everybody (and that includes you, Guy!), BLOG ON...!
Descartes Cat says: I think, therefore I blog.
