EDUSOL almost over - Some highlights

Whew!

Is it karma or what? What makes me get involved in two horribly complex, two-week-long conferences, year after year? Of course, both (DebConf and EDUSOL) are great fun to be part of, and both have greatly influenced both my skills and interests.

Anyway, this is the fifth year we hold EDUSOL. Tomorrow we will bring the two weeks of activities to an end, hold the last two videoconferences, and —finally— declare it a done deal. I must anticipate the facts and call it a success, as it clearly will be recognized as such.

One of the most visible —although we insist, not the core— activities of the Encounter are the videoconferences. They are certainly among the most complex. And the videoconferences' value is greatly enhanced because, even if they are naturally a synchronous activity (it takes place at a given point in time), they live on after they are held: I do my best effort to publish them as soon as possible (less than one day off), and they are posted to their node, from where comments can continue. This was the reason, i.e., why we decided to move at the last minute tomorrow's conference: Due to a misunderstanding, Beatriz Busaniche (a good friend of ours and a very reknown Argentinian Free Software promotor, from Via Libre) thought her talk would be held today, and we had programmed her for tomorrow. No worries - We held it today, and it is already online for whoever wants to take part :-)

So, I don't want to hold this any longer (I will link to the two conferences that I'm still missing from this same entry). Here is the list of (and links to) videoconferences we have held.

Tuesday 2009-11-17

• Debian-Women, by Margarita Manterola (Buenos Aires, Argentina) (PDF presentation, .ogg file, IRC log)
• Personal networks, by Isidro Maya Jariego (Sevilla, Spain) (.ogg file, IRC log)

Wednesday 2009-11-18

• Social networks, by Sofía Liberman Shklonikoff (Mexico City, Mexico) (PDF presentation, .ogg file, IRC log)
• Open Social Education, by Dolors Reig Hernández (Barcelona, Spain) (PDF presentation, .ogg file, IRC log)

Thursday 2009-11-19

• Politics 2.0, by Txopi, Bilbao, Basque Country (ODP presentation, .ogg file, IRC log)
• OpenSocial, by Rodrigo Gallardo (Portland, USA) (.ogg file, IRC log)
• Informatic analfabetization, or why does privative software work towards analfabetization? (.ogg file, IRC log)

Friday 2009-11-20

• Education and cognition from Free Software, by Offray Luna (Bogotá, Colombia)
• EDUSOL's state / EDUSOL projects, by the EDUSOL organizer team (which attempts to be distributed ;-) )

As two last notes:

Regarding the IRC interaction photos I recently talked about, we did a very kewl thing: Take over 2000 consecutive photos and put them together on a stack. Flip them one at a time. What do you get? But of course — A very fun to view and interesting interaction video! We have to hand-update it and it is a bit old right now, but nevertheless, it is very interesting as it is.

Finally... I must publicly say I can be quite an asshole. And yes, I know I talked this over privately with the affected people and they hold no grudge against me... But still - yesterday we had an IRC talk about NING Latin American Moodlers, by Lucía Osuna (Venezuela) and Maryel Mendiola (Mexico). One of the points they raised was they were working towards (and promoting) a Moodle certification. And... Yes, I recognize I cannot hear the mention of the certification word without jumping and saying certifications are overrated. Well, but being tired, and not being really thoughtful... I should have known where to stop, where it was enough of a point made. I ended up making Maryel and Lucía feel attacked during their own presentation, and that should have never happened. A public and heartfelt apology to them :-(