Connecting desire(s).

ALTc 2015 has been a packed conference for me working from Clermont Ferrand in France.










When Maha Bali asked me whether I fancied doing a bit of "virtual buddying" for Virtually Connecting, I was really pleased that I would have an excuse to concentrate a little more than in the past on what was going on in the conference taking place in Manchester.

The fact that it was taking place in Manchester also strengthened my attachment to the conference as I had studied there and had lived there for over seven years.

I could really situate the proceedings, somewhere along Oxford Road...

The identification was deepened by the fact that I had already met a number of the people lined up by Maha and Rebecca Hogue to connect in the hangouts.

I had already met Steve Wheeler and Catherine Cronin in Plymouth at the Pelecon conference in 2012, and Teresa Mackinnon has been my close colleague and friend for over four years for the CLAVIER project.

Then there were other people who I had already met in hangouts. Maha, I had hung out with during #rhizo14 and in a session for Connected Learning TV and EdConteXts,  Keith Hamon and I had had a number of  #clavpicnics with Terry Elliott the year before (was it so long ago?), Autumm Caines, Suzan Koseoglu and Wendy Taleo I had met up the day before to prepare for the Virtually Connecting sessions.

I had been somewhere there with them, at the same time.

Then it starts getting confusing for me...

Swarms and blurring boundaries

I had never ever spoken to or been in a synchronous hangout with Rebecca, Sarah Honeychurch, Bonnie Stewart, Alan Levine, Jonathan Worth, Amy Burvall, Martin Hawksey, Lisa Hamershaimb before. I had, however, previously watched them speaking in previous assorted hangouts, videos.

Sarah and Rebecca, Maha and Keith had been fellow swarmees during work on an article for Hybrid Pedagogy and associated (ad)ventures.

Alan, Jonathan, and Amy, I had come to know through Connected Courses.

Martin Hawksey has been a constant life-saver to me for all things social network analysis.

Martin Weller, I was familiar with from some of his work, his blog and a short appearance in #rhizo14 concerning a shed in Arkansas (what the hell was that about?).

Stephanie Loomis, I had come across during CLMOOC.

Sue Beckingham I had sort of come across during the #blimage thingy via Steve Wheeler.

Others were completely new to me: Kate Bartlett, Rebecca Smallshaw, Cinzi Pusceddu, Rayane Fayed, Rachel Hammel, Joseph Murphy, George Station (though maybe he was familiar too because of Digiped?) Laura Czerniewicz but were no doubt connected to others that I knew.

In the playground

When I look at this, it seems that there was, to use a word Martin Weller used in one of the hangouts, an identifiable 'gang' that I had been playing with and another part of a same (?) ever fluctuating and diversely connecting gang-crowd, some of whom I had been observing on the other side of the playground, (I can't think of a better way of explaining it) with whom I felt, I feel attachment.

Is this real or virtual attachment?

We are surely not attached for the same reasons or with same perceptions...or are we?

I am not quite sure if I were to take a Hawkseye (as in Martin Hawskey) view of the network if I would understand better the complex patterns of which I am a tiny but, for me at least, signifying part.

We are no doubt attached even when we are not aware.

Identity parades...

Whose we is we?

Whose they is they?

Whose I am I?

Who am I now?

Who was I then?

Signfiers...

What does all of 'this' mean, taken as a whole? (Where do I draw the line for this?)

There is perhaps a latent desire to connect more closely in some way, or at least to announce some sort of tribal belonging.

We no doubt recognise each other by those or what we have in common.

What is this swarming tribe of which I am a part?

Is this real, is this virtual, is this...?

Tribe, seems to me to be too rigid a term.

Swarm seems rather less than human.

Where or what is our commonality?

Where do we find common ground?

Coming back to ground ALTc

When I look at this, with a little distance... there are a number of things which stike me.

1) I have many real friends who I have never met offline. These friendships are not virtual.

2) I am not sure that I would have been able to have so many useful conversations with these people had I been in Manchester for the conference.

3) I am sure that the effort invested in Virtually Connecting and the engagement made both deepened my ties with the people present (in the hangouts) and with the conference proceedings.

4) I developed immediately transferrable skills in the setting up of hangouts on air, the animation of discussions, and in dealing with distant time-zones.

5) I gained enormously from working in a team. You learn much about people when you do more than discuss or exchange tweets or comment on blog posts. You learn about their professional qualities, you learn from them and expand your own knowledge.

6) None of this would have happened, perhaps, if I had not been able to engage with  a 'gang' in #rhizo14.

7) There is something quite absurdly moving about being together with people who have made the effort to get up at five o'clock in the morning, to stay awake until three o'clock in the morning, to be with somebody in spring when I am in (he hesitates...where am I?)..er autumn, to be with someone in a place where it never snows, with someone in a place where it often always rains, with someone in a place where it often always snows, with someone in place where the cockrel crows, with a bunch of people in a hotel bar in a place which used to be my home, with others off-screen, who I have met before online, looking after a little girl who appears in hangouts with her mum,  with at just that moment my little daughter who appears in her bedroom to say hi.

8) I am left with new attachments, a playlist memory aid, a number of impressions of a conference and a swarm of difficult questions.

Memories at play

So, these were memorable moments, these moments remind me of being in another place rehearsing for a play.

We were a team brought together around a play.

We brought ourselves to the play and the play changed.

We were a little world for a moment.

We were somewhere else.

We were in between.

In between is really no where you can go alone.

Real place out of time

It's a real place that I remember.

We were there...

Connecting places in between

And then it came back to me.

This place, I had already given a name.

I went to Plymouth in 2012 "In search of Nomad's Land".

I came back to the edge of chaos in my daughter's bedroom, with its pink curtains, with its curiously arranged toys, I sat down with a tame tiger and I knew that I had found it.


P.S.

The density of the 'network' in the post became apparent to me when I started inserting links to the various nodes which underpin it.

Nomad's Land is clearly of indiscriminate size, has an ever fluctuating population, and is in a time zone where time itself has gone crazy...

In a tangle.

That's it, now I am completely lost.

I am not at all sure how to draw a/the line.





I am in a bit (?) of a tangle.

I am not at all sure whether drawing a line is appropriate.

I am only sure that drawing or should I say typing this is making me feel like it's a life-line.

Where there is life there is hope as they say.

Yes of that I am sure, I am typing this here...

I can see it.

I mean I could see it when I was typing.

Existential questions.

I am not even sure of myself!

Who am I?

Am I: English, French, a learner, a teacher, a researcher, a facilitator, an academic, a writer, a pundit, a critic?

I am not sure that one answer is ever adequate to such a question.

I shall settle for, in this present context:

Simon, @sensor63, Simon Ensor. Simon David Anthony Ensor. Learner.

What is this?

Is this:

a) careful reflection?
b) instinctive nonsense?
c) emotional?
d) rational?
e) a useful contribution?
f) useless noise?
g) respectful?
h) disrespectful?
i) offensive?
j) inoffensive?
k) etc
l) none of the above?
m) all of the above?
n) other.

Will this be:

a) read?
b) unread?
d) misunderstood?
e) understood?


Where am I?

I was reading Frances Bell's post 'Cool Webs for Rhizo 14'  and an ensuing discussion about the value of spaces which are 'Cool'.

For some people 'cool' is associated with a blog.

So is this blog space 'cool'?


If I then post it on Twitter or in a FB group does it remain cool?  

Is a back-channel (where I let fly my feelings) cool?

I am at a loss to understand this concept of a 'cool web'.

Frances explains in her comments:

"I am thinking of the cool web as a safer space where people with different assumptions/ languages/ cultures can try to engage in dialogue without too much pain."

I am not at all sure that this space on my blog is necessarily safe from pain. 

Is this an issue of a particular space or an issue of a particular relationship that I might have with someone?

Marianna Funes continues this discussion and chips in with:

"When I teach cross-cultural psychology in a business context we often focus on the need to attend to what is taken as self-evident and to presuppose that, even that which seems ‘outrageous’ to somebody in a culture they do not understand, has a basis that makes sense for the group of people adopting the given action."


I am getting the distinct impression that this is not about 'cool webs' but about 'cool people' who are able to question their assumptions, their own ways of being and of communicating.

So this is not a question of a particular space but of developing a trusting relationship?

On the whole I would say that Rhizo 14 has been a 'cool course' with 'cool people' .

(but maybe I am using a different meaning of cool here - sorry).

I would include Frances and others who comment on her blog as 'cool people'. 

(provisionally, until I decide they slip momentarily into another category; it rather depends on if/how they respond to this blog post).

Ultimately we will all be 'cool people'.

 (I digress and in my attempted humour I make an elementary mistake, I think even dead people are not at all necessarily cool. Indeed SOME very DEAD PEOPLE are definitely NOT and will NEVER BE COOL).

I apologise for the shrieking capitals here, but I rather like them, and this is my domain.

(no I know it is not a domain of my own cos I am lazily still on Blogger, sorry)

What is loud? What is silence?
I have been having a continuing discussion with Marianna (so silent that she may not be aware of it) about the question and value of silence. 

I am very much intrigued about this question. I always remember the power and importance of silence from my days as a counsellor, and as a salesperson and now as a teacher.

Silence has the potential for great power in a relationship.

Stony silence is in my experience undoubtedly NOT 'cool'.  

So being silent would not necessarily be a means to establish 'cool webs', it might have exactly the opposite effect.

If I participate actively in a space am I facilitating conversation or silencing others?

What is the appropriate volume of participation?

Must we take turns? 

If that is the case then we might have to wait a LONG time (and it wouldn't be really very rhizomatic IMHO).

If I leave silent participants be silent am I excluding them or am I being respectful?

I remember my father at the end of his life who would find the 'noise' of his grandchildren oppressive. I can fully understand that. His grandchildren were not being noisy (I can assure you I know the difference) they were excited to see him and wanted him to play with them.

When he was younger he would have loved the rough and tumble and the noise.

It was so frustrating for all of us when we were divided by volume.

I remember being sad at the volume of the television which stopped all conversation.

What was low volume for him was high volume for us.

I have been intrigued at conversations going on around this issue of 'noise' and 'silence' on the web.

I am not sure if I am in a 'cool web' or a 'hot web'.

Maybe I carry my own personal micro-climate with me, whereever I am?

I noted a twitter conversation the other day.

sometimes, the only response is silence #moocmooc #stillweb
— nickkearney (@nickkearney) March 4, 2015

I loved that tweet.

I even replied to it.

Then I thought better of it.

I deleted my reply.

I agreed with Nick Kearney, yes 'sometimes the only response is silence'.

Is his tweet an example of the 'cool web' the  #stillweb?

I suppose if he puts the hashtag #stillweb it must be.

If I put a grisly image on the hashtag #stillweb will it still be #stillweb? (probably not).

I am not sure about this 'cool web' business.

Maybe it is not about a space but a relationship?

Should I tweet him a link to this post?

Will he regard it as noise?

I am not sure.

Nothing is clear for me.

What is pain? 
Frances talks of pain in her comments to her post.
What is painful for me would certainly not be painful for others. 

I may have developed high resistance to pain.
She says: 
"We might cool down the conversation with explicit norms, clarifying our objectives and assumptions,offer facilitation and other support in an attempt to achieve real dialogue. Over time the constraints could be loosened."
I wonder who it is 'we'? I wonder what 'cooling down conversation' means? 
Will this blog post be cool and within explicit norms?
I am not sure. I shall ask Frances (that is a joke Frances).
Would an emotional blog post be cool and within explicit norms?
Who will decide on the emotional charge? 
I don't know.
Wouldn't a legalistic or scientific article be a cause of pain for someone?
I am in a (bit) of a tangle.

I suppose this is my attempt to ask respectfully the question.

I am sorry if I offend.

I shall be a little upset (emotional blackmail and silencing tactic?).

THE COMMUNITY

There has been much talk 'in' #rhizo14 of community, all over the spaces.

I suppose Dave Cormier should be happy about that.

He did entitle his course  'The community is the curriculum'.

I am having great problems with this idea of 'community'.

I am having so many problems with it that I shall have a short pause to muster strength.

Here is a  musical interlude offered by the great (my opinion) Serge Gainsbourg.

For those of you who can't be bothered to listen to Serge Gainsbourg, he sings in French and he asks a large number of times:

"Who is in? Who is out?".

So this is my question for THE COMMUNITY (you know who you are if you are reading this):

"Who is in? Who is out?" and when and where and who decides?

Frankly this is quite clear for me now.

There is not one community.
There are multiple communities.
These multiple communities are not fixed (much).

I am not sure that I feel that I  belong to any particular community.

I don't do belonging very well.

Of course this feeling doesn't mean that I don't belong to a or several community/ies.

I have clearly identifiable traits - I am a man for example. (of this I AM SURE).

I have behaviours which mark me as a community member, like speaking English with a more or less middle class pronunciation with twinges from the North West and some French derived borrowings.

I am a human tangle embodied.

Dave Cormier, I think that he agreed to the idea that there were a number of communities in #rhizo14 in an interview that I vaguely remember with Maha and Sarah.

However I still have a few questions:

How long do a bunch of people have to stay together to consider themselves a community?
How long do a bunch of people have to stay together for others to consider them a community?

I think that the "rhizo14" community has never ever been fixed if we consider that there might be one.  That being the case there can never be A CURRICULUM, but multiple, dynamic, oscillating and competing curricula.

So I suppose I could say that the varied and fluctuating communities in and around rhizo14 have varied and fluctuating curricula.

If we consider that the course was about Rhizomatic Learning, it would seem to me that this is as far as we can take it.

There can never be at any time A COMMUNITY or A CURRICULA.

Ethics.

If there is no 'cool web' or 'hot web' and no 'COMMUNITY' nor 'CURRICULUM' then that is chaotic, exciting and potentially full of risk and power struggles - a bit like life.

Keith Hamon has written a great (IMHO) post about complexity ethics. I shall put a link here:

Ethics for MOOCs: Assertive Humility.

I think we could change that title and just write:

Ethics for life (and a better world): Assertive Humility.

If there is no one 'COMMUNITY' then there can only ever be personal ethics and desires which will vary and fluctuate according to who, with whom and when and where people interact.

There are moments when I prefer (like now) a bit of peace to sit down and reflect.

There are moments when I am moved to formal academic research.

There are moments when I love larking around on FB telling Sarah Honeychurch she's a typical anarchist. She doesn't appear to take any offence. (I worry Sarah.)

There are moments when I find people in general and people in particular annoying, hypocritical, contradictory, bossy, noisy, disrespectful, snooty, superior, confusing,  boring, egocentric [add any negative adjective] and I include myself in those negative qualificatives applied to people.

I prefer to be inclusive.

Hope and forgiveness

There are two stories associated with rhizome and rhizo 14 which I would like to highlight.

There is a story of hope and there is a story of hopelessness.

There is a light side and there is a dark side.

On one side of the coin (the light side) there is the possibility that diversely humoured and skilled people can learn to live like the baboons in the video 'Understanding the Effects of Hierarchy in Society" that Howard Rheingold shared with me the other day.  With the Alpha males dead, they lose their desire for dominance and hierarchy and become increasingly forgiving and open.

There is the hope that we can learn to live with our differences, value our different perspectives, take a deep breath or two when we feel like we are being talked down to or ignored, or excluded, or... (add any negative feeling towards others) and try to work towards more open, perhaps less rigid societies which allow for diversity and mutual respect.

On the other side of the coin (the dark side) we can take from #rhizo 14, an impression of fixed positions, fixed labels, fixes spaces, hierarchies, stories of power struggle, memories of the inabilities of humans to use their imaginations to see the other peoples' point of view.

We can imagine rigid and unchanging community lines, a need for rigid policing of behaviour, a need for a quota of words written, a series of instructions as to acceptable forms of expression.

I doubt that anybody in #rhizo14 would really want that.

I hope that I am mistaken.

On the other hand there might be another group of extremists who might emerge and become dominant.

They might decide to follow the actions of Pol Pot and decide that all Alpha males, and in particular those who they consider to be senior academics should be sent to the killing fields, with the objective of achieving an earthly paradise and a 'less violent society'.

It worked for the baboons...

The rhizome, nature, and  humans in particular do have an ugly side.

I prefer to live in hope (perhaps stupidly).

Yes, I accept that Rhizo 14 is an experiment.

I often change my mind.

I am hopelessly and annoyingly inconsistent.

That in itself gives me some cause for hope.

I am in good company.

I am happy to be in a tangle.

Thank you for your part in my tangle.

Stillness in frenesy.

Crowd scenes

It is a cinematic standard, a lone figure, caught up in a chaotic crowd, moving in the other direction...







It is the noise of Twitter streams, thundering down the valley, while we cling onto a branch struggling, for dear life, not to be swept away to drown.

It is the noise of hardly understood French in an echoing restaurant.

As the evening continues, the speed of banter accelerates, the volume increases, the people around the table speaking...or is it yelling simultaneously?

It is the crowd of unknown people at a conference, a party, a disco, a market,  apparently all following well-tread paths to meet up with their friends, colleagues, partners, loves, accomplices,  while you are left to gape dimly from the wings, dumb to their well-rehearsed performance.

It is the gap separating cultures, separating generations, unwilling or unable to adjust to the noise, to the speed, to the mode of communication, to the language, to the music, to the ways of performing identity, to the ways of making sense.

How shall we be connected together my friends? How shall we learn to respect silence, to respect noise? 

How shall we reach out to save the drowning soul? How shall we realise we are the drowning soul? 

How shall we dissassemble our cliques, our countries, our clubs, to let in new blood?

How shall we see we are part of a whole? How shall we pause to make sense in this chaos...together?

Silent Movie Stars

How did the Silent Movie Stars react to the arrival of the talkies?

Chaplin aside, many would sink bitterly without trace, unable to adapt to a new medium.

For a time, the two genres would live on side by side, until the public voted with their tickets for their preferred entertainment.

How should we preserve the silent master-pieces of another age?

A Gold Rush 

How do pioneers respond to the arrival of a Gold Rush mob ?

Comfortable in their virgin wilderness, the first settlers respond grumpily to the influx of new adventurers who are hungrier, perhaps more desperate for unearthing that rare nugget.

The old-timers mutter amongst themselves, reluctantly pack their belongings and slip away to escape the harranging crowd, that ragged, uncouth rabble.


A place of worship

An Anglican lower-church clergyman is cinematically transported to Harlem, to a Harlem gospel church.

He kneels, takes out his book of Common Prayer , sighs and starts to indulge in silent contemplation.

Deep in prayer, blissfully caught up in his quiet-time, he is suddently blasted off his lowly hassock by a congregation of full-hearted charismatic soul.

A library reading room

There is a feeling of quiet communion in a cathedralesque library reading room.  We are together, we feel connection, we feel peace to study, to savour knowledge...together.

Is there still a place for quiet refuge, for the unsaid, apparently unacted, bond of being one with learning?

A bustling coffee shop

Unexpected encounters, noisily shared ideas, banter, jokes, excited movement, clustering, grouping, whispering, guffaws of laughter. 

We are in the heart of a city, at the hub of intellectual energy, of serendipity, of innovation.

A global village?

Brave new world, shrunk to manageable proportions. 

Web 2.0, a participative promise of prosumer paradise.  

We are caught up in the glory, or might it be mirage, of global-reach. 

Whose artificial limbs are we using? 

Will those limbs be ripped away from us the moment we learn to run faster on our own?

A whole world, becomes a click away. 

What shall be our message? Where shall we speak?

Connnecting courses

It's all so straight-forward, connecting courses. 

We have a  simple bundle of hashtags, a familiar friending on Facebook, a conversation circle on a Google hangout, a glossy website.  

OMG we all feel that longing to be closer. We revel in an illusion of harmony.

Closer to what? Closer for who?

Will we introduce rave-parties into temples of contemplation, money peddlers into temples of worship? 

Will we have to fight to be heard in the town square, while facing up to a mob going in the other direction? 

Will we fight for the right to be badged with a hashtag? 

Will we be the pioneers overwhelmed by the prospectors? 

Town planning?

Shall we set out plans for private dwelling, for public assembly, for drinking and dancing? 

Whose plans should we adopt? To what extent will our voices be respected? 

Down to earth

I am taken back to images of dulling routine, swimming, or is it drowning in water. 

Shall we glory at our lot on Youtube?  

Accept your lot, love your enemy,as yourself... 

Angry thrashing of a drowning man

Is it enough to accept? Is this really water? Is this water not contained in somebody's aquarium?

I am not ready to swallow the bait whole. 

Why don't we thrash this out together?

Shall we not imagine new spaces in which to express our diversity, our laughter, our soul, our belonging, our learning, our connection? 

Lost in a jungle

It would appear, for the moment, that we are lost together in a jungle, where all recognisable calls are cause for reassurance.

Beware the wolves.