Reclaim Arcade: Some Notes on the First Few Weeks

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Reverend

The Reclaim Arcade reviews are coming in!

Yeah!

Last weekend made it three weeks that Reclaim Arcade has been open to the public, and it has been pretty rewarding to have folks appreciating the space and all the thought and detail that went into it. It’s a space that has been in development for more than 4 years now, even if we didn’t know exactly what we were building towards when we started.*  We opened on January 29th, with a sneak preview for friends and colleagues on the 28th, which was the first real taste of how cool it was to have folks in the arcade actually playing the games and enjoying the “awesome vibe.”

The above images highlight scenes from the soft opening wherein we tried to get a sense of what we might have missed in terms of details. It is one thing to imagine an arcade, it’s another to actually run one, and inevitably you will forget things. Turns out we didn’t miss too much, that said we did need a coat rack given it’s winter and folks had nowhere to hang their jackets. The other thing we still need is a slop sink for the mop, but we are working on that. Besides that, I can’t think of too many things we missed, which is truly a testament to Tim’s remarkable ability to both create and operationalize the vision. The opening weekend went quite smoothly, save the fact that we got the first of 3 consecutive snow/ice storms over our first three weekends of being open. The weather gods were not with us.

We did have a few last minute cancellations in an otherwise booked-out opening weekend, and we were able to lean on some of our customer support experience at Reclaim Hosting to ensure folks were well taken care of by providing refunds or coupon codes to reschedule a visit at their earliest convenience. Almost everyone took us up on the coupon codes or simply chose to reschedule for an upcoming date, which was cool to see. Probably the coolest thing was to see how quick and able our two hires were at running the space by themselves. One of the things Tim and I wanted to get a sense of right away was how much would the daily operations depend on us being there. As of right now we are only open 3 days a week: Friday from 4 PM to 12 AM; Saturday from 10 AM to 12 AM; and Sunday from 10 AM until 9 PM. What’s more, we have the schedule organized in two hour blocks limited to 20 people with an hour in-between sessions so that we can do a deep cleaning. A few questions we had were:

  • Are two hours enough for folks to enjoy the arcade? Definitely, that seems to be a sweet spot for folks, and no one has complained about it being too long or short.
  • Is an hour enough time to clean the space for one employee? Turns out one person can wipe down all the games, sweep, vacuum, and generally reset the space in 20-30 minutes, which was awesome for us to realize.
  • Is 20 people too many for the space to feel safe? This was absolutely not the case, 20 people in the  3000+ sq. ft. arcade still makes the arcade seem empty, there are really no issues with folks being able to social distance and play games without concern.
  • Do we (Tim and I) always need to be on-hand? No. Thanks to the fact that both Tony and Shane rule, they were running the arcade without our help by the end of the second week. We spent the first two weekends trying to show them everything we knew about the space, the various issues with the arcade games and pinball machines, the living room AV setup, the VHS store, etc. There is quite a bit of odd-ball knowledge about old school AV inputs and 40 year old arcade game wonkiness, but apart from that it was possible for Tim and I to take the second Sunday off, which was almost unbelievable given we did not feel like we could both take a day off Reclaim Hosting for the first 5 or 6 years!
  • Can we keep the games adequately maintained? This is certainly a developing story, and we’re resigned to the fact that we’ll always have games down, but that’s simply part of running an arcade. Games will go down, and we’ve learned a few key things, namely have as many extras on hand as possible: extra games you can swap out, extra PCB boards to quickly replace, and a spare monitor chassis or two for the inevitable monitor issue. We also have excellent local contacts for monitor repairs with the Arcade Buffet as well as someone who repairs boards that is within an hour’s drive, a trip I took more than a few times while I was in Virginia this time around. So, in answer to the question, yes, we can maintain the games, but it will be an ongoing process that will require time and patience, but luckily with the 3-day schedule we’re currently running we have time to troubleshoot any issues with the games during the week.

Those are a few of the questions that we could not answer until we actually opened, and it feels so good to be open! Tim and I make for pretty good partners, and the fun part about Reclaim Arcade is that it is so different from everything else we’ve done together.

We’ve had great success with Reclaim Hosting, and a lot of that was tied up with our incredible edtech network. But the arcade is a different beast all together—no one in edtech really cares all that much about an 80s arcade in Fredericksburg, which is entirely understandable. Reclaim Arcade is hyper-local in ways Reclaim Hosting never was, or could have been. It’s also first and foremost a material venture: the main attractions are by-and-large 40 year old cabinets that need constant TLC, so there’s very little that is virtual about this experience, at least so far.

I think seeing folks react so favorably to what we built has been some great reward for the focused work we have put into building this space. And it has only gained momentum since opening weekend. We’re now seeing the coming weekends fill-up, and from all reports people are digging the arcade, which is the reason why we did it. So, while still early on, the arcade is already a smashing success in my mind. It can pay for the employees, the strip mall space, utilities, and at least part of our arcade game buying habit. Thankfully, it really only needed to cover one or two of those things—so we’re also feeling vindicated in terms of the arcade as an investment. Not necessarily financially, although also that, but in terms of an investment in Fredericksburg and the surrounding area, the idea that there is hope and possibility in a good, fun idea well-executed: our faith in the seed that was Reclaim Arcade is blooming in the winter of everyone else’s discontent 🙂 And you can’t do that without a local community supporting you, so thanks to everyone who has come out and shared the love!

On that note, it is worth noting that our Facebook page has been crucial to building awareness and support locally for the arcade. We recently passed the 2000 likes/follows threshold, and a lot of folks reference Facebook when letting us know how they discovered the arcade. I’m not a huge Facebook fan for all the reasons, but at the same time it’s hard to argue with its efficacy in this case. People find us there and then come, what’s more Facebook is also where we have found a fair number of old school games that populate the space, so I have had to try and come to terms with my Facebook demons when it comes to the arcade.

Finally, I posted it already, but the above Reclaim Today episode is a 20 minute reflection Tim and I did 10 days or so ago to capture some of our first impressions around opening and operating the arcade. My favorite part about the video is how damn happy we are talking about the arcade. I have more to talk about, in particular specific repairs we did, the evening we spent with Arcade Buffet, the TV antennae we setup, as well as the TV stand we improvised for Reclaim Video, which is amazing, and much more, but this post is already too long and rambling, so I’ll stop here, but know there is much more to come on the Reclaim Arcade front in every way!

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*I have a separate post in the works about the metamorphosis of our little bit of strip mall in Fredericksburg since 2016, but that has proven quite an undertaking, but I’ll link back here once it is done. Blogging ain’t no job for the dilettante.

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Reclaim Today: Jolie Tingen Talks Kits

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Reverend

028: Jolie Tingen Talks Kits

At the end of January I had the distinct pleasure of chatting with Jolie Tingen about Duke University’s unique project Kits for episode 28 of Reclaim Today. I am intrigued by this project because Kits is a concrete example of what the oft-referenced Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE) might actually look like. In other words, a learning environment wherein faculty and students can use a variety of tools including, but not limited to, the learning management system for the various courses they teach. The magic of Kits is the way in which they’ve worked through granular user management and single sign-on in order to make access to various teaching tools like Slack, WordPress, Box, and many others seamless and intuitive for their community. It’s the most fleshed out vision of the NGDLE that I have come across yet, and it was a real pleasure to hear Jolie frame Duke’s thinking around this tool.

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Reclaim Today: Arcade Grand Opening

Posted on February 10, 2021 by Reverend

027: Arcade Grand Opening

Tim and I sat down on Saturday to talk about the grand opening of Reclaim Arcade. You can see the joy and excitement on our faces, which is my favorite part of the video. I have a lot more to write about the last two weeks working on the arcade, but given I am currently in Paris waiting for a connecting flight to Milan I’ll save the details for a longer post, but this video talks about our first impressions and underlines the fact that people are coming out to enjoy Reclaim Arcade and that’s why we did it, so it feels pretty good.

Reclaim Arcade was also featured on a local Fredericksburg vlog Freehling Finds, and Bill Freehling did a wonderful job highlighting the space. What is cool about Reclaim Arcade is that in many ways it is hyper-local and almost exclusively place-based, which is the opposite of Reclaim Hosting.

And it helps that Tim has been masterful at promoting the arcade on Facebook, Instagram, and in interviews like this one. It’s interesting because this venture has little cross-over with our Reclaim Hosting community, so in many ways we were starting from scratch in terms of generating buzz. I also dig that I have a cameo in the Freehling Finds video playing Elevator Action, which has been restored to its former glory once we got the board fixed.

The last two weeks has been a complete blast, and in many ways exceeded our expectations. It will be a lot of fun to see what comes next, but for the present I think we can rest assured that Reclaim Arcade is a hap-hap-happening!

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Building a Gaming PC with Tommy

Posted on February 8, 2021 by Reverend

One of the projects I have been working on with Tommaso since Christmas has been putting together the component pieces Santa brought him to build a bitchin’  gaming PC. You see, with COVID the elves were not assembling PCs given the questionable labor conditions up North, what’s more there’s been a run on graphics cards as a result of those pesky bitcoin mining elves. So this was no simple process. But luckily Tommaso did all the heavy lifting, he researched all the details and we worked together to bail out Santa. We did fairly well out of the gate, but turns out the Motherboard was for an Intel processor (we got an AMD) and the RGB fans we bought were 14cm when they needed to be 12cm. So, there was some returning of merchandise, but luckily Tommy was nothing like me as a child, he actually had patience.

So, here are the specs and costs of our components pieces for the gaming machine, for posterity:

  • AMD Ryzen 9 3900x CPU chip ($500)
  • Samsung 2 TB – 860 EVO SSD harddrive ($275)
  • Phanteks P400 RGB Mid-size, ATX-compatible Tower  ($150)
  • Corsair RM750x Power Supply ($150)
  • Thermaltake Riing Quad (12cm) RGB fans ($150)
  • ASUS Rogue Strix B550-E Motherboard ($275)
  • 2x Corsair Dominator RGB Memory Sticks 16GB ($240)
  • GEForce RTX 2080 Super Graphics card ($850)

That’s a whopping $2590 for this gaming machine. And roughly 1/3 of that total was the graphics card, which was more expensive than it should’ve been. And I even bought it second-hand because the new ones were almost double the above price. From what I understand there has been a run on graphics cards over the last few months, and folks are gouging consumers with ridiculous prices. Not sure if it is a result of the pandemic and everyone doubling down on streaming and online work/play, but when I saw the prices my jaw dropped. Just a year ago when I was flirting with this project they were in the $400 to $700 range, with the top of the line being closer to $1000, this year everything seems to have shifted up from anywhere from 100 to 200% more. Nuts.

So, We have been slowly putting the gaming machine together after the returned parts came and I finished just in time for him to use it before I headed to the US. I won’t bore you with too many details, but I will say it was super fun to build it together. I think spending the money this time (while painful) is probably a good investment because you realize you can swap up parts and add drives pretty easily, and that will be a lot less expensive over time—or so I tell myself. I was struck that Windows still charges $250 for their operating system, WTF! That’s a cost I could not swallow just yet, we’ll see what the internet has to offer. Tommy was pretty proud given he spec’d everything, and his patience in putting it together was exemplary. I also think he has a finer appreciation of how these machines work as a result of this process, which is pretty cool.

I’ll be honest, going into this project I was a bit nervous about the assembly. I have never built a PC from scratch, so this was a new experience for me. That said, it’s really easy. They make it dead simple to put these machines together now, and there are so many resources to help you every step of the way. It’s like Ikea for gaming machines down to the last details, including wire management, power inputs, and various motherboard inputs. It so smooth that I was sure I messed something up, but lo and behold it worked a treat.

The other cool thing is the RGB culture these machines have spawned. The gaming PC is as much about a cool light show as it is about massive power and ridiculous graphics resolution. Everything on this machine has RGB lights except the power supply, which is hidden at the bottom underneath all the components.

Finally, the hardest part of the build was getting Windows 10 on a USB drive so I could install it. The installer is over 5 GB (almost 6GB), and FAT32 USB drives for Mac’s balk at any files over 5GB. So, I had to use this helpful guide on “How to Create a Windows 10 Bootable USM on Mac” to figure it out. I requires a little terminal kung-fu with rsync (which I am now familiar with) to get the Windows 10 ISO copied to a USB drive so I could install it, and this was the only part of the build Tommy seemed remotely impressed with his dad. It keeps getting harder and harder 🙂

NB: The above video orientation is off given I was not thinking, but I do list all specs and details within a few short minutes.

Posted in fun, video games | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Like and Subscribe for a Tour of Reclaim Arcade

Posted on January 20, 2021 by Reverend

The Shari and Clint of the Happily Ever Novak YouTube channel got a sneak peek of Reclaim Arcade, and I really love the way they captured all the elements of the space: the video store, the living room, and, of course, the arcade. It’s tightly produced with some amazing shots and comes in at a very manageable 4 minutes. I really appreciate them sharing their experience, and to say the opening of Reclaim Arcade next week is a dream come true is an understatement. What’s more, given how amazing it looks I do think it will be quite hard to top, it’s truly awesome.

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Reclaim Arcade adds its 59th Cabinet: Super Cobra!

Posted on January 19, 2021 by Reverend

59 cabinets seems to be on the verge of a milestone. In just over two years Tim and I have collected one short of 60* old school arcade cabinets that represent the foundation of Reclaim Arcade. You can see all of them here (although that list shows only 59 because the Gyruss cocktail we bought—while still in tact– was used for parts to fix the upright Gyruss cabinet). I am not sure why 60 seems special to me, but I think it has something to do with the fact that 60 cabinets seems to be just about capacity for our 3000 square foot space. I’m not gonna lie, we’re running out of space.

But when I saw a really well maintained Super Cobra come up for sale that had a Scramble PCB, as well as a high-score save kit, I had to do it. I have been looking for a Scramble cabinet for a while, they’re fairly uncommon on KLOV, but they also have some beautiful bezel art and the cabinet is yellow with a simple Stern stencil. Super Cobra, being a prequel to Scramble that came out 5 months after the original in 1981, had a red cabinet with Stern stenciled on it, and similarly compelling bezel art. I still want a Scramble cabinet, because I am a completist, but the Super Cobra fills a need, and the beauty is it can also play the Scramble PCB seamlessly, so depending on the day you can swap games.

The seller of this one was amazing, he included the extra board and hi-score save kit. He also had the whole thing wrapped up and palletized and delivered to Fastenal in less than 24 hours. Wow! This also means it is quite likely I’ll be able to play this one in person in a couple of weeks…GROOVY.

I mentioned this is a prequel to Scramble, and what I mean is that this game features a Cobra helicopter side-scrolling through increasingly difficult obstacles whereas Scramble was a 50s silo-shaped space ship. The original was so successful for Stern that they quickly modified the game play and added a few sprites and created a more “contemporary” version. These games are basically identical though, which suggests small alterations in 1981 were more than enough to warrant an entirely new game given the demand for cabinets. There were over 15,000 Scramble cabinets made, and just over 12,000 Super Cobra cabinets made. Best of all, Reclaim Arcade will soon have one of them 🙂

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*Technically we do have 60 cabinets given we bought both an upright Gyruss cabinet and a cocktail, but we used parts from the cocktail cabinet to fix the upright cabinet, so I am not counting it.

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Behind Every Retro Arcade is a Preservation Community

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Reverend

I know I told Tim I’m done buying games for Reclaim Arcade after securing Zaxxon yesterday, but I don’t want to jinx myself given I just saw a mint Gorf machine up in Pennsylvania on the KLOV forums for $900. It’s clean, and like Zaxxon another game that was a staple of the early 80s arcade. That said, I think Reclaim Arcade is at—or even a bit beyond—it’s game capacity at this point. Right now we have 58 arcade cabinets, four of which are undergoing maintenance, namely Missile Command, Battlezone, Space Invaders, and Q*Bert, and one more that’s in transit (Pleiades) that will probably not be on the ground for the opening in two weekends. We’ve tried to reflect all of this on our Games page on the website, which is one that I really love:

Reclaim Arcade Games Page

Lauren Hanks did an absolutely stellar job on the website for the arcade, and the Games page is easily my favorites element. With a tiled list of all the games that feature either old school adverts for the games or animated GIFs of the game play, it’s both informative and playful at once. And when you mouse over a game you are told it’s name, whether it’s currently available, and finally a link to that game’s KLOV’s arcade-museum.com profile:

Imagine an Animated GIF of Moon Patrol

Once you mouse over the image more is revealed

We are also using features on the site to immediately indicate if a game may be unavailable by shading the image a bit to suggest it may have an issue. You can kind of see what I mean if you look at the image of Missile Command to the left of Moon Patrol above. Loving it, but this tiled list of games also speaks to over two years of game collecting, which has often meant driving to far away states, meeting other hobbyists and collectors, and making relationships with awesome game restorers. If you are going to open a retro arcade it would behoove you to embed yourself within the broader community of retro game collectors. One of the students in Zach Whalen Games and Culture class remarked on our work by saying: “You’re basically preservationists.”  That’s probably a bit too generous given we are using them to run a business and offset the cost of rent, loans, etc. but there is no question that a significant part of the retro gaming community on KLOV are doing just that, and I think it is pretty cool.

One recent example that stands out in my mind was when a KLOV forum member posted the first Dig Dug PCB (Printed Circuit Board) ever made, serial number 001! So basically ground zero for commercial circuit boards for one of Atari’s most beloved, early-80s arcade cabinets. That’s pretty cool if you are into that kinda thing, and the forum post around it is illustrative of the tension in this community. Many of the community members are preservationists at heart, and they often pull out this GIF, which I love:

But then there are others that suggest getting top dollar for it given it is a collector’s piece, and the tension between commerce and preservation plays out. That said, most of these items are part of personal collections, and with the renaissance of retro arcades since 2005 or so, arcade machines have new currency. This greater perceived value probably accounts for why so many awesome pieces are both so well preserved and so readily available, if also more costly. When I look back 10 years ago to what folks were paying for PCBs versus now, the inflation is fairly steep. COVID-19 has certainly put a dent in some of that, but by-and-large the games keep getting older, the parts scarcer, and the community more intent on trying to preserve the games while controlling price inflation.

Too Much Reaction GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

I know the forums forbid price policing, but the KLOV community is populated by a lot of folks who have worked hard to preserve the games other folks are buying, so there’s a kind of an unspoken community ethos that games that are over-priced should think twice before posting lest creative ways to say “that’s too damn much” be exercised. Most of which start by saying, “I know we are not supposed to price police here, but …”

Fact is, there’s a definite pecking order in terms of quality vs price in the various cabinet arcade forums I follow. KLOV is where you go if you want the best quality game at the lowest price. It’s been the place I have gotten most of our best games at the most reasonable prices, and many folks also cross-post to Facebook, but there are numerous groups and that is more of a hodgepodge. What’s more, prices can trend a bit higher and by-and-large those groups are all about selling—whereas buying and selling is only one part of KLOVs community.

Then, at the very bottom, is Ebay. This is where sellers usually go if they want to sell the same product they listed on KLOV or Facebook with a significant mark-up. You even see KLOV posts that say posting this here for X amount before going to Ebay where it will be posted for X+Y amount. In regards to Ebay I have found this true in my own experience of buying arcade games there. I have gotten a few deals on Ebay, but no where as good as Facebook or KLOV. But I will say sometimes Ebay is useful when you need a PCB board immediately and you’re willing to pay a mark-up. What’s also interesting to me is that the only bad experience I’ve had with a seller after scores of transactions was on Ebay from someone on Long Islander no less—which I should have guessed given what I know about where I grew up …. f**king Long Islanders 🙂

I find this all really interesting because it took a bit, but after the last year (4 or 5 months of which we tried not to think about the arcade given COVID) I have had not only renewed interest, but more intense as well. I do enjoy buying cabinets and various parts for Reclaim Arcade, but I have also become much more interested in KLOV as an online community. I no longer just read the buy/sell threads, but have moved to general discussions wherein people discuss whether Pole Position was, indeed, the first 16-bit arcade game or not—there is some hardcore knowledge and unabashed schooling going on in that thread! All of which has led me to actually finish my KLOV profile and officially join the Vintage Arcade Preservation Society (or VAPS).

I have found this community a welcome distraction for the last six months, and I figured it was just a matter of time before I started posting more about my interest in this stuff here on the bava. I have to remember that this blog is about media of all kinds, not just the edtech world which I personally find myself in a bit of a rut. I’ve come to the moment in my career as an edtech where I see the same conversations and discussions coming around again with the same results and conclusions, and it can seem a bit pointless at times. Luckily I still see blogging as transcendent of any one field or “career.” I’m sure the retro arcade cabinet community has all the same trappings, and I bet things come around again for the old timers that makes them shake their collective heads, but the one advantage I have in that regard with the retro gaming community is it’s all new to me—I am still quite green. In fact, this may be a good argument for changing gears a bit to prevent getting burnt out or, even worse, jaded.

Anyway, I have no idea how a simple post about Reclaim Arcade’s games page became an extended train of thought about community, but then again I think I remember now [I also had to change the post title by the time I got to this paragraph]. Every game we obtained over the last two and a half years has a person behind it. Someone we had to deal with who is in the hobby and has something to share or recommend. I’ve been deeply impressed by more than a few of them for their kindness and genuine concern for these artifacts of the past that they consider themselves caretakers of before passing them along to their successor. I think that’s the part of this I like the best, Reclaim Arcade is not only a fun idea for folks in Fredericksburg and beyond to experience these machines in a bitchin’ environment, but there is also a sense of having the time and space to care for theses pieces of our collective history for future generations. It might be small and insignificant in the larger picture, but it feels generative and meaningful on a very personal and human scale.

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Zaxxon: Lord of the Isometric Cabinets

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Reverend

Let me start by saying I had no intention of buying another game. In fact, today started like any other day. I woke up, fed the dogs, drank my coffee, checked in on Reclaim tickets, did some accounting, and only then did I start look through the Killer List of Video game forums before I checked in on the various old school 80s arcade cabinet Facebook groups I watch. Like I said, nothing out of the ordinary.

But then it happened, I saw a post about a good condition Zaxxon machine in Richmond, Virginia that was on sale for $575. It has been in storage for 30 years, has a direct lineage of ownership, and is about half the price of others I have seen on the forums (and those are usually cheaper than most to begin with). Add to that it is less than an hour drive from Fredericksburg and this couldn’t be anything other than a sign from God that I needed to get this game … and, dear reader, I did!

Let me be clear of the sacrifice here, I am not a huge fan of Zaxxon. The gameplay is wonky, and while the isometic projection to try and create a sense of 3 dimensions was groundbreaking in 1982, that did not necessarily translate into great gameplay.

It was a popular game, and was ported for most major consoles at the time, most notably Colecovision—but it was not one I necessarily loved. But it’s arcade above individual preference at this point, and that’s not only because I am running out of vintage early 80s cabinets to buy. The fact is, just about every arcade in 1983 or 1984 would have had a Zaxxon on the floor, so how can we let Reclaim Arcade go without? Answer me that?! This is the 80s after all, keeping up with the Joneses is everything!

So, mark it 58 OG cabinets, dude. Reclaim Arcade is just about as awesome as an early 80s arcade could have every dreamed of being 🙂

Posted in Reclaim Arcade, video games | Tagged , | 3 Comments

OERxDomains: the Wonder Twins of EdTech Conferences

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Reverend

It’s been such a crazy month and a half that I have yet to announce some exciting news: the Domains conference will be happening in 2021. What’s more, it will be a joint event alongside the good folks that run my favorite annual conference OER. It’s been framed as OERxDomains, and I like that. The X suggest the power of two when forces are combined, not unlike the Wonder Twins of edtech conferences!

Shape of an awesome online edtech penguin conference, form of a bucket of water to throw on the virus!

The theme of this year’s event is all about Reclaiming the Joy of etech, and the themes provide a broad vistas for folks to share their work, ideas, and dreams:

  • Theme 1: Openness, care, and joy in the times of pandemic;
  • Theme 2: Open Education responses to surveillance technologies and data ownership in education;
  • Theme 3: Open in Action: open teaching, educational practices and resources, how you might be using Domains and other tools;
  • Theme 4: Shifts in agency and creativity as empowerment of learners and educators;
  • Theme 5: Open Source Tools: infrastructure, cloud environments, targeted teaching tools

You can read more at the official call for papers page, and here’s to hoping you can join us. So, to that end, submit a proposal and save the date because on April 21st and 22nd the fists connect and new shapes and forms will emerge…I pinky promise 🙂

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Some Conference Thoughts from Digital Ocean’s Deploy

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Reverend

Back in November Tim, Lauren and I presented alongside Kaysi Holman and Inés Vañó García from the CUNY Graduate Center about work we’re doing in higher education using Digital Ocean. The presentation was under 30 minutes long, pre-recorded in Streamyard, and aired two months later as part of the Digital Ocean Deploy conference. it can be easily found online via their Deploy Conference page on YouTube as well. The moderator, Erin Glass, was kind enough to bring us all together to make it happen, and her introduction is in many ways a short preamble of her brilliant article on Ethical EdTech published recently I really enjoyed presenting alongside the folks from the CUNY GC (my alma mater of sorts), but I agree with Tim that when planning what we would talk about I missed the mark a bit. Rather than talking about Reclaim Cloud and the Emulation as a Service idea, we should have talked about our work with the CUNY Commons folks to make a one-click installer for CUNY’s C-Box. That’s on me, and I will try and avoid letting my excitement with the latest cool thing happening at Reclaim Hosting “cloud” my judgement.

I appreciate Erin inviting us, and I also really benefited from seeing how they organized Deploy as a participant given Reclaim Hosting will be joining forces with the OER21 folks to put on a OER21/Domains online conference in late April, and we’re still very much imagining the possibilities for making this as compelling and accessible as possible. One of the elements of Deploy I really appreciated was that the session was pre-recorded almost two months in advance and allowed, which allowed for us to attend the online conference and actually participate in the Discord discussion not only during our session, but for almost a month before that.  This made getting subtitles done seamless, to ensure everything was accessible out the gate.

What’s more, the way the conference was presented there were multiple channels going at once via a Video player hosted on a single page, that also had the schedule. It could not have been easier to access what’s happening across the conference at any given time in one, fell swoop. I also loved the way the kept all sessions to less than 30 minutes, and had awesome preface art, TV-like bumpers, and highlights between sessions, not unlike the transitions between TV shows. And this kept me watching, which I think testifies to something quite powerful. My pre-recording and cleaning up transitions and announcements you have a much better chance of making sure everything is accessible and that folks will stay tuned-in.

And getting back to my lament about not talking about CUNY’s C-Box installer, I believe that having to groups (CUNY GC educators and Reclaim Hosting folks) in conversation makes that 30 minute time-frame that much more compelling. Everyone spent a few minutes sharing their ideas (which made it move well), but I think have a conversation between groups around topics like ethical edtech would be absolutely brilliant, I think this worked really well during the Against Surveillance session with Maha Bali, Chris Gilliard, sava saheli singh, and Benjamin Doxtdator. It was a compelling discussion that balanced both rehearsed points, sharing media, and extemporaneous discussion that was a near perfect combination. They were even braver in that it was live, but I think managing live across several channels for two days is a lot of work, so I would like to see if there is a balance there between pre-recorded and live.

As a start thinking about the Domains sessions in the conference I am wondering how we can connect folks running various projects across different schools with one another to chat, while balancing structured “formal presentation” (i.e. rehearsed talking points) with new ideas that emerge as part of conversations in the moment. That will be a key for me because I think that’s what makes these sessions compelling and memorable.

Digital Ocean Deploy Conference swag

On a slightly different note, their swag game was pretty tight. Not only did they send a nice sweatshirt that arrived the day before the conference, but they also sent a cable bag, microphone port blocker, and webcam cover. Pretty interesting how those final two suggest a kind of ant-surveillance mentality for their participants and presenters, which was cool.

Anyway, these are all post facto notes about Digital Ocean’s Deploy as we begin to dig in for preparing for a fully online OOERxDomains 2021. It’s a fun challenge to work through, and the first step is stealing from other conferences that things that worked and learning from your own mistakes to make the next time around better.

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