It was nano presentations all the way at the TeachMeet proposed by Drew Buddie for the 2018 Scratch conference at the Media Lab in MIT, Cambridge, USA. We got an end-of-the-day time slot, and a cool dark space (with super duper AV facilities) called The Cube.
As we’d all had a long long day attending, presenting, and workshopping at the main conference, all presentations were ‘nano’ in nature – short, sweet and kept to the point. Presenters from all over the world volunteered to share out their wisdom – USA (Mildred, Kathleen, Shawn), Africa (Max – Kenya, Rehema – Tanzania, Justin – South Africa, John – Nigeria), Europe (England – Andy & Richard, Ireland – Mags, Scotland – Drew & Rob, Austria – Matt, Netherlands – Hans), South America (Brazil – Ana). There was a ‘use tech well for the good of all’ thread running thru the evenings presentations.
Drew was MC; Russel Tarr’s trusty classtools.net Wheel Of Fortune determined the order in which our thirteen speakers took the stage; me and The Dromedary of Doom were (almost totally redundant) timekeepers; Richard and John were on-call ‘technoroadies’.
There was a whole new zero hour aspect to this TeachMeet, which was a delightful as it was surprising. Although some speakers had signed up in advance in answer to an online invite, others signed up from the floor as the TeachMeet was in progress – by email or by sharing me a link to their presentation. Lightning speed internet reliability – connectivity ftw!
The regrettably missing portion in this TeachMeet was some built in conversation time, but the clock and our collective tiredness worked against us in this instance. However, judging by the responsive atmosphere as the presentations rolled along, I think it is fair to say the occasion wasn’t diminished in any great way by this omission.
Thanks Drew for prompting this, the third of hopefully many consecutive TeachMeets at Scratch.
See Twitter timeline for this TeachMeet at #tmScratchMIT
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