OEB MidSummit: the 4 words that stand out

The past two days I attended the first OEB MidSummit event, held in Iceland. I've been a long time oeb-global fan (takes place in Berlin in December every year), and this is a new, smaller, more cosy and more reflective mini-conference mid-year. I don't know what I enjoyed more: the event or my first Iceland experience - they came in a package. Great sessions, great landscapes.

Here are the words that stand out:

• small, 
• culture, 
• power, 
• jerking.

Image: Meeting old oeb friends like Inge - she blogs faster than her shadow, you might find other midsummit blog posts on her Ignatia Webs.

SMALL is beautiful

It turns out that size does matter and the ideal size is small. (Ha!) That goes for a more human-size conference like this, but also for one of the major commercial trends out there. Learning doesn't just go small, it even goes micro these days. We had micro-credentialing first, now micro-learning is all the rage. What about the other parts of development such as micro-feedback, micro-motivation, micro-mentoring, micro-practice, etc? A few sessions dealt with future scenarios, and I attended Tom's session where our table group discussed a world of micro-learning and gig-jobs. Here's an impression of consequences of a micro-world future scenario:

Image: our table group's doodling on the future scenario of a micro-learning world

CULTURE is the roadblock

The word that stands out from the first conference day is culture. Donald Clark used it as part of the 'hard talk' at the end of the day. He's been in these conferences like these for 30 years and yet the practice of higher education (HE) isn't in line with what we know from research on learning. So what's stopping the innovations and newer practices, more adjusted to our current context? He blames culture. Actually, I hear it from a lot of my clients too : the strategy can be the most wonderful thing, but culture will win. What's a culture? Let's say every time in your organization you hear the phrase 'that's just how we do things around here' - bam, that's culture.  I've blogged about this magic word before: 5 things you can do to shape your company's culture.So, that led me to state in the closing debate that if indeed culture is the roadblock from moving what we discus in these conference to the workfloor, the title of the conference should be rewritten from Shaping the Future to Shaping the Culture. Make no mistake: cultures can be shaped, and there are a few levers for it. One of the most powerful ways to shape a culture is to role-model the 'to be' behavior. And I saw many great examples at the conferences of people role-modeling the future of higher ed. So let's keep doing that to start with.

Image: the closing conversation

POWER to the people

Let me build up to the word of day 2. In the opening plenary about AI, Donald mentioned the phrase 'it only gets better'. He was rightfully pointing to the fact that the mathematical brute beasts that AI really are actually improve and learn. The rest of the day made me rephrase that sentence in 'it only gets better IF...' . For example,  IF we are aware of how our future world is shaping up through AI. For example IF we get a more broad understanding of what AI is and what it is not. (This whole 'man against machine mindset isn't really helpinng...)  IF we control who controls the makers of AI. Yes, AI is unstoppable, but who will be in a power position to decide which role AI plays? Most AI now comes from Silicon Valley and with its systems we are submitted to Silicon Valley's world view. Previous technological disruptions like the industrial revolution severely changed the power balance in society with revolutionary reactions to it. (A point Andrew Keen made a day earlier.) Inge made a plea for an ethical layer in AI. Nell Watson showed many positive examples of AI, and Donald pointed out that AI is less racist than our human brains are. Interesting times ahead. I remain convinced as I was after last years global OEB session that AI is the most disruptive learning technology out there.

Image: Nell Watson talking about AI showing a slide with the 'good bots' and 'bad bots'. She is involved in interesting projects such as OpenEth on ethics and AI with a mission to 'make machines love'. 

We are JERKED around

So that brings us to the final word: Tony O'Driscoll did a talk on surviving digital Darwinism and says we are all being JERKED around. Tony is not the guy to have a potty mouth, so he actually meant a physics term. There is velocity, there is acceleration, and if you take that one futher you get the jerk: it is the rate of change in acceleration. If you are driving a car, you know what velocity feels like, and you know what acceleration feels like. Our senses are not meant for the next level of change : jerk. Allegedly you can only experience it in space. But that is according to Tony the pace of change we are going to experience, not accelerated, but jerked. How do we live and learn in such a context? His presentation is on slideshare.

Image: Tony on the consequences of jerk to learning


So, that were my four words.
I did a session too, on 'Leadership Development for All'. I'll tell you about it another time.
Enjoy whatever you are doing, unless it's illegal or involved hurting cats.