Convergence 10 Years On

Back in October Meredith Fierro was part of a 10 year anniversary celebration of UMW’s  Hurley Convergence Center (originally the Information Technology Convergence Center). She shared some photos from the event, and it provides me the welcome occasion to reflect on my time at UMW with all those awesome folks and projects.

2004 to 2014 to 2024: Cartland explaining the life of the mind and the buildings that contain them (poor kid in the front row)

Cartland Berge is narrating part of that history in the image above, noting the 2004 birthdate of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technology, with the core of Andy Rush, Martha Burtis, and Jerry Slezak already being on the ground. I would join that crew, along with Patrick Murray-John, in December of 2005.

Far slide from Cartland’s talk featuring the “dream team” re-united in 2023 at UMW for Reclaim Open

I could speak endlessly about how much I love those folks featured in the image above, but just know it’s the case and we can move along. Along with the above images, Meredith also shared a couple from the celebration that featured highlights from the building’s 10-year history, one of which was the UMW Console Living Room Zach Whalen and I had built in the Spring of 2015.

A label detailing the magic that was the UMW Console exhibit

I love how the title of this write-up highlights how this little DIY, guerilla exhibit featuring a living room from 1984 embodied the vision of the building as a space where media converges, which was absolutely Zach’s vision.* The exhibit was my last project at UMW before heading out for the frontier of self-employment that fall. The console living room was absolutely rad, and Michael Branson Smith’s vision for broadcasting TV in a local, over-the-air network of 1984 shows and commercials was in many ways the piece that brought it all together. This project also created an itch that I’ve been scratching for the subsequent decade. Tim and I re-created that living room almost panel-for-panel in Reclaim Arcade, and it’s awesome! We also re-created a 1980s video store (Reclaim Video) in that same location, once again a huge hit. More recently, I’ve re-created both the video store, the arcade, and a new-fangled diorama in Trento, Italy, so this project has very much followed me. In fact, it has pretty much defined my “work” since 2015.

A mini UMW Console with the great Shannon Hauser, who (along with Zach Whalen) may have been behind the inclusion in the retrospective <3

I’m really proud of that little exhibit, and thrilled it got a mention. I have to admit it has kept on giving me so much to create and explore since.

That said, I think the real vision of that building was the reason why Meredith was there in the first place, to join her fellow tutors at the Digital Knowledge Center and its current director Cartland Berge to celebrate the amazing work that outfit has done for the last decade. One of the things I figured out when I left UMW was that having the vision, as Martha Burtis did, to focus on scaling support and building a culture of digital literacy is fundamental to the success of just about any digital project you want to launch, and arguably that’s never been more important than now.

So while our little exhibit was cute, I think the retrospective provided the occasion to reflect on just how right the DKC model proved to be for UMW, and for those beyond who were smart enough to take that lead.

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*I remember more than a few faculty discussed the exhibit as if it was a challenge to the $40 million dollar building at the time, once again not at all the case, but fun to imagine.