Come one, Come all!

[awilliams]

"Come one, come all!"

That is the carnival cry, yes? Well, this year one of you called us out on the conference for the "all" part. Let's be blunt, if we could figure out how to have a party with all of you there, we totally would! For a lot of reasons, it may prove difficult to make it to Keystone this year. We understand. However, no matter where you are, the carnival extends to you! This year we’re going to do even more to make that true.

First, all of our keynotes will be live streamed and you can register now! These aren't just your average live streams though. These will be multifunctional engagement rooms with chat, resource links, and much more!

(click to register for the livestream)

Second, we have an official #instcon flipgrid! The passcode is "instcon18".  People from all around the world, will be and already are posting video questions and responses about the conference. Download the mobile app for iOS or Android 

Third, we’re also calling out the person who called us out by bringing her to the conference! laurakgibbs is an avid online educator and sharer. When we first started planning for this year’s conference, Laura expressed her desire for teachers and learners to share their educational conference experiences with each other in forums such as the CanvasLMS Community. Her words struck a chord with us and we invited her to this year's conference, with a special mission (oops, that was last year’s theme, right?). We have asked Laura to put her energy towards spreading the conference experience to anyone who is unable to physically be present in Keystone in July. Read Laura Gibbs' Blog and check out the amazing resource she has created in her InstCon Remote Control course where you will find:

• Ways to engage with other remote participants and on-site participants, like Laura
• A tool for connecting with others around specific sessions of interest
• A Twitter feed of #instcon tweets and people
• A form to include yourself in Laura’s twitter list for the Twitter widget
• Ways to introduce yourself and meet other remote participants
• Ways to share your own #instcon resources, be they a Canvas course, or not
• Diaries from Laura and others attentinding on-site

We hope you will join us, from wherever you are! Post on our flipgrid, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, or if you prefer email, you can also sign-up to be contacted periodically about remote experience news and updates.

Do not let this experience pass you by. We want you to join us!

[Bobby2]

This is the best special treat. Thanks so much awilliamsfor letting people know about this.

And laurakgibbsfor understanding that we all want to be there and having the brilliant idea to share it all with us, as much as possible. Isn't technology wonderful!

[orwinr]

awilliams thanks to you and laurakgibbs for working to engage the remote participants. As a person that works remotely, like on the other side of the planet from my university, I truly appreciate any efforts folks make to engage remote participants. My team and I live streamed 261 events last year for all members of our department at the University of Washington, including faculty and staff meetings and of course loads of events for students in our online graduate degree programs. It really makes a difference to the remote community. Kudos to all the team that will be helping engage with those that cannot attend this year!!!

[laurakgibbs]

Remote-Workers of the World, UNITE! Thank you orwinr‌!

I also work remotely from my school, and Twitter has been the main way that I keep up with what is going on at my school. I'm always very pleased when I feel as much or even more "in the know" than faculty who are on campus but just limit their interactions to people in their department/building.

And please let me know of ideas and strategies that come to mind as you ponder InstructureCon! I have "drone slots" open, for example, where I am glad to be your eyes/ears on the ground. Let me know if there's something of special interest I can cover for you! 🙂

DronePad 

[orwinr]

Thanks for the info, laurakgibbs. Thankfully I get to participate again this year in Keystone 🙂 I will take a look at the agenda and if I can squeeze it in might engage with the Drone-Pad and see about helping engage some of the remote participants.

[laurakgibbs]

Oh, how great -- and hopefully we can connect there in person. Excellent! 🙂

[awilliams]

For more context on how this came to be, I was inspired by posts like The "InstructureCon From Afar" Experience‌, #stepsforbeth (woot Beth is making it!), and OU Digital Teaching: Week 2. Thoughts on NOT attending conferences. So it has been all of you poking that has led to this and I hope to see where all of you take it. I'm just here to grease the wheels. Thanks for making them squeak! 

[snufer]

Honestly, this is awesome. I can't think of another conference that has such a tight-knit community and outreach to remote participants.  

[ronmarx]

This IS a great idea and much needed offering until (or instead of) Instructure adopts an exhibition-conference model closer to that of other trade shows, where speakers/presenters get full access to the events, and lunch to boot! It's just a budgeting matter. Until that happens, streaming keynotes ( #instcon flipgrid) is great!

[laurakgibbs]

AGREED! That's just what I was saying about Flipgrid and Canvas in that other discussion: it's just night-and-day difference when a software company is really interested in their users, listening to us, helping make conversations happen. My personal hope is that InstCon can be the starting place for lots of long-lasting conversations, discussions that take us in all kinds of directions, like the great convo ericwerth‌ started the other day here. That is my kind of convo! 🙂

https://community.canvaslms.com/message/106386-re-higher-order-thinking-in-memorization-heavy-course... 

And hey, to find that convo here all I had to do was search for "Gramsci" because how often does Gramsci come up in a software conversation ha ha.