Reclaim Workshop

I was invited to give a talk at the Sloan-Consortium’s 7th Annual Emerging Technologies for Online Learning. I’ll be talking about Domain of One’s Own, Reclaim Hosting, web thinking,  and some of the amazing possibilities we’re starting to see emerge as a result of the work we’ve done thus far. In fact, Jon Udell’s recent post about names and meaning when it comes to URLs ties nicely into the idea Martha Burtis had regarding naming your own domain as a metaphysical endeavor. This semester is going to be all Domain all the time, and for that I’m very excited. I’ll be giving a playful, experimental version of this talk in Atlanta for the Domain Incubator at Emory University in just over a week. And while the two presentations will be distinct talks, I have an idea of trying to incorporate revanchist 1980s NYC b-movie themes into both—but we’ll see if that works. Actually, it doesn’t really matter what I talk about because the real gold for the Domain Incubator conference, as Tim Owens just announced, will be the open and forkable documentation on Github that will narrate how the entire Domain of One’s Own project has been setup, run, and maintained.

Anyway, the good folks organizing the Sloan conference also gave me the opportunity to run a workshop. I jumped at the chance because I want to see if I can’t get a roomful of folks not only up and running on Reclaim Hosting , but also comfortable with manging their own slice of a web server and various applications in two or three hours. I think I can, and this workshop is going to be the test. Anyway, below is the description I submitted, and I would love any feedback. Would your sign-up for this workshop if you read the description? Does this sound like something a faculty member, technologist, or adminsitrator might even be interested in? I want to start getting at the idea that setting up your own domain and web host is not jsut abut a protfolio (though it’s that too) , but it’s a portal into a broader approach to thinking like the web at the personal, communal, and institution scale.

This workshop will provide attendees a focused session to get up and running with  your own domain name and web hosting account. By the end of this session you will have gotten the following:

  • Your own domain name (i.e. jimgroom.com)
  • Your own web hsoting account (with instruction of how to manage it)
  • Instructions for installing at least one open source application on your web server (such as WordPress, Omeka, etc.)
  • Instructions for publishing original content to your space.

Sounds crazy, right? But it’s not, taking control of your online presence and managing your own domain and web space has never been easier. The goal of this workshop is to provide faculty, technologists, and administrators a hands-on overview of how the web works from the inside-out. In a moment when everyone is talking about controlling your data, learning to code, and web literacy—a sandbox space like this is invaluable for taking the first steps in truly interrogating how to think like the web.

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6 Responses to Reclaim Workshop

  1. Oh, great. So now I have dueling workshops with Jim-fucking-Groom at ET4Online. I forsee a big empty room…

  2. Reverend says:

    Mike,
    Awesome, you are going to be there! That’s 3 for 3 Mike, I am fired up. As to your concerne, thanks for being nice, but I’ve read your blog, I know who is the real deal holyfield. Wonder if there is anyway we can work together on this workshop. Let’s talk.

  3. Matt says:

    I would totally be there just because your doing it. But, of course I already have a few domains running on WordPress. I’ll spread the word about it to people I think could use this kind of thinking.

    Don’t know if you saw my latest post about a new html tag that could help people take more control over their online presence across multiple websites. Its kind of nebulous because I am still trying to wrap my head around this idea of finding a way to connect conversations across multiple websites and services in a way that lets individuals collect their distributed contributions (Tweets, comments, forums posts, the whole Texas sized enchilada) back into their own domain. Oh, and also make remixing/quoting content easier. But would be interested in your thoughts on it.

  4. Matt says:

    Oh yeah – I have been talking about ds106, the assignment bank, domain of one’s own, etc in this session I teach at UTA called “Designing Effective and Engaging Online Classes” How pretentious is that name? 🙂 I went for broke when coming up with that. Anyways, your ideas got the most interest in the last class and now there is some chatter building around campus about assignments banks and digital identity and all of that. Maybe we can have a revolution around here yet.

    • Reverend says:

      Matt,
      I have to imagine you all are ripe for that right now, and I am watching with keen interest. As for the HTML tag pinpointing work you’ve done around the web that aggregates it back, that’s part of how I want folks to be thinking about Domain of One’s Own and reclaim hosting. This is a space where you integrate your distributed web presence for various reasons. RSS might do that; APIs might do that; HTML might do that. But whatever does it, it has to be easy and it has to work seamlessly. That’s what we are starting to dig into now with APIs and Domain of One’s Own (the we is Tim Owens and Martha Burtis, mind you). And what’s exciting there is we actually might realize some of what you are talking about as the future very soon 🙂

      • Matt says:

        I’m excited to see what comes out of the master minds 🙂 I forgot that I actually wrote a paper about ds106 for class last semester – “Multimedia and Interaction in Open Online Learning: An Innovative Approach Using Digital Storytelling”. I should look for a place to publish that and raise some more awareness of the awesomeness that is at UMW.

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