Reclaim Hosting is home to more than a few higher EDU type hosting services, with all kinds of apps, packaged up, scaled up to a lot of different needs. But let’s get serious about one thing,… ” Professional Development”.

I never was nor have I ever been a card-carrying “Academic”, no. I’m barely there when it comes to the credentials (I never completed out the MFA program I entered in 1994, took all the classes, but did not present and full art exhibition, which is the de rigeur for such degrees in the U.S.)

However I did follow my bliss and got way into what was purported to be the “future” in 1996 which was NOT the web. No. It was CD-Rom development and so-called “multimedia” that held sway back then. And I had acquired just enough skill to throw together a Macromedia Director based “toy” with a few animations, and one or two button click interactivity. Jump to NOW,…

Boy have things changed a lot since 1996. Lots of conference and vendor conferences over the years. But my visits/travels curbed considerably after our EdTech Center shutdown in 2012. I think the last visit I made to a conference was one that came here to ol’ Roch-cha-cha NY (aka Rochester) in 2016. One of the last 2-3 New Media Centers conferences prior to NMC’s demise in 2018. My employer tolerated the time I spent going downtown to the convention center for about 4 days in a row seeing presentations, talking with colleagues. I now I was there to see Bryan Alexander’s presentation on “futurism” that Summer 2016. Anyways, my professional deveopment story was mostly me auto-didactically watching YT videos, reading Blogs and very rarely if ever actually talking to someone at another University.

So when did I bump into Reclaim? I think it was on Twitter following folks from Mary Washington and noticed Jim Groom was leaving WMU, and starting a company with Timmyboy, and that sounded cool. And after that I just kept sneaking peaks, looking in and finding out what was going on. And step-wise, it got BIGGER. And then I learned our Library folks had adopted Domain of One’s Own for Digital Scholarship (I’m I.T. and not the library, so that’s another topic/discussion for much, much later). But we were approached at least once by the Library to maybe, possibly, if we could see our way through to taking over DoOO from the Library. Reader, we did not, ‘cuz being IT we already had WordPress sites being managed and you can imagine all the arguments that would have started. So DoOO has stayed at the Library. But, I’m a worrier by nature and thought, “I must needs get edu’macated on this DoOO, just in case”.

And hence I read, and followed along, and followed teh socials to get up to speed. And DoOO seemed pretty cool, but the bigger Greater enterprise was even MORE interesting. And lo’ and behold, old Rev. Jim Groom would blog about the Co-working space in Fredericksburg and then the Video Rental Store Front, and then the Arcade. And Reclaim was just getting BIGGER. And then the big announcement, Reclaim EdTech.

Now Reader, if you followed me this far,… know that my job title has been, will forever be tied to variations on a theme of that exact word: EdTech. My original title in 1996 was:

Instructional Technology Liaison Coach

So EdTech is where I’ve been (except for 1yr, after our EdTech Center shutdown). And even now I’m amazed I stuck around this long with that responsibility. But, unlike some I did not waste the privilege of that title, and just keep doing the same thing, or worse ignoring everything outside my daily grind of responsibilities. And when Reclaim EdTech appeared, I wanted to find out what/how Reclaim was going to Reclaim EdTech?!

Which leads us up to the very moment, this pinpoint, needles edge, NOW. Right HERE. Being a fan of all the live streams of ReclaimTV and the variety of topics covered, and the Reclaim EdTech crew conducting all those hours of stuff, I admit I never paid much attention to Reclaim Radio. I know Paul Bond did stuff with it, having studios product audio programs for air on the Internet Radio station. But I never tuned in to hear music sets. So when the announcement went out that the Radio station was going to host an event on #ds106Radio, I said to myself,…

And like so many other people I registered, and go the link to the site. And realized Taylor J. had wired up the same Discord widget to the ds106Radio page, and it was all there. It was NOT:

1.) A Teams Call

2.) A zoom webinar

3.) A GoToMeeting conference.

It was way better than that, but more importantly was on the surface of it, a joining of loosely coupled parts An internet radio station AND a Discord server. Now I know full well behind the scenes it was WAY more than that, but the simplicity of it all on the surface, brilliant. An Economy of means, par excellence. But what happens next will AMAZE you.

While it wasn’t overrun like the Woodstock Music festival, people joined in. Big Time. 25 simultaneous listeners, and once they figured out they could chat in real-time on Discord and interact,… that was it. People figured it out. And each session, even when it was just re-streaming of WFMU’s stream or a bigger produced presentation, was still amazing to sit and listen to. A Good Time was had, and people were challenged, urged into action, or thinking differently about things. I know I was feeling super-duper energized. It was a perfectly designed and executed Professional Development opportunity all around. And it was all there on the Interwebz.

No delayed/cancelled flights on Delta Airlines. No CrowdStrike mishaps, or weather delays. Just hour by hour, discovering something new. Like Steven Spielberg once said, the best movies (change that to “experiences”) are ones where the thing begins, and then it never stops beginning. No middle, no end, that is the #ds106radioSummerCamp in a nutshell. It’s a story that just keeps on beginning. So I salute Reclaim EdTech, Reclaim Hosting and all the principal players invovled. This was as good/better than any conference I’ve ever attended.