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LA Roadshow Recap

10 days ago I was sitting in a room in Los Angeles with 12 other folks listening to Marie Selvanadin, Sundi Richard, and Adam Croom talk about work they’re doing with Domains, and it was good! That session was followed by Peter Sentz providing insight on how BYU Domains provides and supports top-level domains and hosting for over 10,000 users on their campus. And first thing that Friday morning Lauren and I kicked the day off by highlighting Tim Clarke’s awesome work with the Berg Builds community directory as well as Coventry Domains‘s full-blown frame for a curriculum around Domains with Coventry Learn. In fact, the first 3 hours of Day 2 were a powerful reminder of just how much amazing work is happening at the various schools that are providing the good old world wide web as platform to their academic communities. 

https://roadshow.reclaimhosting.com/LA/

All of the presenters that shared at the workshop provided a wide range of examples, and they were kind enough to provide both links and slides post-facto. I’m including them below along with some notes from our shared Google Doc of the panel session:

Panel on “Possibilities with Domains” featuring Marie Selvanadin (Georgetown), Sundi Richard (Davidson) and Adam Croom (OU Create):

Notes:

  • Why Domains? “..provides you with web hosting so that you can take ownership of your online presence, develop valuable digital skills and engage in open and connected learning practices that go beyond institutional boundaries.”
    • Digital Fluency 
    • Digital Identity
    • Digital Freedom
  • community.bergbuilds.domains
    • Community Directory
    • Lead with examples
  • Coventry.domains
  • Hosting.nyu.edu
    • Web Hosting vs. web publishing
  • Georgetown
    • Marie: Teaching and Learning Center
    • Cross campus collaboration using Domains
    • Learning, Design, and Technology
    • Flourishing in College and Community
  • Davidson College
    • Shared a bunch of examples of how domains is being used
    • Faculty: When we meet new faculty, we let all faculty know about domains
  • Oklahoma Create 
    • Webfest
    • Faculty development programs
    • The creaties
      • This highlights good sites and shows what good work looks like
      • It is a way to award people for good work
      • e-mail list of all users, send broad e-mail to seek for nominations
    • This week on OU create
      • Weekly blog on best of OU Create
      • Students lead this activity
    • OER: textbooks online

You can also see the full slides from Peter Sentz’s presentation which created over a year ago as a defense of the BYU Domains program over a year ago, and really intelligently frames the pros and cons of  running a domains program at scale, and what it requires. 

The afternoon of day 2 was spent diving into SPLOTs, which is becoming a cornerstone of our Roadshow sessions at this point. I love those tiny teaching tools more and more each time I share them with folks. Below are a few examples of SPLOTs that were shared during the show and tell, many of which were created in just a few minutes time as part of the workshop: talk about fast cheap, and out of control edtech!

SPLOTs Show & Tell:

One of the questions that came up during the SPLOT workshop is if there’s a SPLOT for podcasting, which reminded me of this post Adam Croom wrote a while back about his podcasting workflow: “My Podcasting Workflow with Amazon S3.” . We’re always on the look-out for new SPLOTs to bring to the Reclaim masses, and it would be cool to have an example that moves beyond WordPress just to make the point a SPLOT is not limited to WordPress (as much as we love it) —so maybe Adam and I can get the band back together ?

And that was just day 2!* In fact, the workshops are starting to take on a shape that seems to work. Day 1 is a deep-dive into the technical management of the Domain of One’s Own platform, which means we get in the weeds of how WordPress, WHMCS, and WHM all work together to automate the creation of cPanel accounts through a given campus’s single sign-on. Understanding the ins and outs of these systems takes training, and the workshops are one way to provide campus admins more dedicated instruction as they want to take over more responsibilities on the ground and be proficient with their web hosting environment. All that training has been compressed into day 1 (you can find much of the workshop documentation on our site), and day 2 is dedicated to sharing how various schools are approaching, supporting, and enabling work on their platforms. It’s a lot of fun to hear all the good work, and I think it is quite useful for re-invigorating folks given it takes a lot of time, attention, and care for a Domains program to take root and grow. 

Special thanks to all those folks who attended,  you can see the participants list here (it’s a SPLOT!) and given the success of this workshop (and last year’s at Skidmore College) we are currently planning on running another in the Philadelphia area for Spring 2020, so stay tuned!  

*I’m kind of exploring an in media res approach to this recap post because I am always experimenting ?

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LA Reclaim Roadshow

In a couple of weeks Lauren and I will be heading West to put on the second Reclaim Roadshow at Emerson College’s Sunset Blvd campus. We will be in the belly of the Hollywood beast with some state-of-the-art media digs. We have a full house again, and will be following a similar approach as we did at Skidmore College last year. We are thrilled to have 15 folks from 10 different colleges and universities that cover a diverse range of approaches to Domains. Day 1 will focus on an in-depth training around the infrastructure, diving into WHMCS and WHM, and will also feature some SPLOT love.

Image of Emerson LA on Sunset Blvd

Emerson LA on Sunset Blvd is a futuristic take on the Jawa Sandcrawler, and I love it!

Day 2 will act more as a user group where folks like Peter Sentz will share how BYU Domains has scaled to more than 10,000 users, as well as exploring how they have tried to measure its impact. And we will have a special remote panel featuring Marie Selvanadin (Georgetown), Adam Croom (University of Oklahoma), and Sundi Richard (Davidson) that will share what’s been made possible through the implementation of Domains on their campus. What’s more, we are planning on swapping tales between existing schools as well as new schools that could use some tips and tricks as they get their project of the ground. Looks like the 7 Things You Should Know about Domain of One’s Own from ELI could not come out soon enough, but more on that in another post.

Tech Noir bar from Terminator, dig the neon!

I’m really excited about meeting up with folks in LA, and not just because I love that city, but also because it is the home of Tech Noir!