abject learning

For the next few days I’m going to be crashing the Open Education Conference here in Logan, Utah. This is the third sharable content event in roughly as many years here for me… and the way that it has evolved over that time is itself interesting. The first IT Institute was something of a SCORMathon, all about standards and perpetuating the LEGO model of learning objects. I remember David Wiley giving a talk on Online Self-Organizing Social Systems (.pdf copy) to a mostly skeptical audience (it lit my feet on fire). Last year, the themes were social software and reusable content, and it was one of the best conferences I have ever attended — great sessions, outstanding vibe and mind-blowing hallway chatter.

Looking at the conference program, I expect another winner. Less emphasis on social software, and more open courseware, open content and open source — but from my own perspective that’s a benefit. I feel far less versed on these themes, but I grow increasingly convinced of their importance…

The hospitality and genuine openness of the organizers and volunteers is simply unparalleled. And they certainly know how to give out swag — I got a snazzy t-shirt (yay!), and get this, no tote bag…

I’ll probably turn in my usual pathetic conference-blogger performance, but you can track participant activity on the conference wiki (c’mon, let’s get this wiki party started, folks…), or via the Flickr tag opened2005
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I just received the following email invitation for a conference I am attending next month. The text (and symbols too — hope they render in your browser/reader) reads:

Don’t miss Heat Up the Street, a sizzlin’ EDUCAUSE street party at the UNIVERSAL CITYWALK Entertainment Complex®. You’ll have your pick of the walk’s venues, with food, music, dancing, and a cash bar.

* Celebrate an early Mardi Gras at Pat O’Brien’s®
* Get in the groove with live music—reggae at Bob Marley – A Tribute to Freedom™ and jazz and blues at CityJazz®
* Spice it up a little at the Latin Quarter™
* Shake it loose at the groove^SM dance club.

It’ll be an unforgettable night filled with people to meet and music for movin’ and shakin’ your feet!

A few thoughts:

* Isn’t “celebrating” Mardi Gras, in Orlando of all places, in colossal bad taste right now? And exactly what kind of Mardi Gras can we expect? Something tells me that this isn’t an attempt to make work for displaced cajun chefs and zydeco musicians. I also note that “Pat O’Brien’s®” signature drink is a “hurricane”, and that Their site is utterly oblivious to any irony about it — the site also asserts that “Have Fun!® [is one of many] registered trademarks of Pat O’Brien’s Bar, Inc.©” As an aside, corporate sponsorship of New Orleans Mardi Gras events and floats was (and I hope is) forbidden by tradition and city statute.

* It’s unclear if They have trademarked “Freedom™” itself — or have They trademarked “Bob Marley – A Tribute to Freedom™”? And I wonder how old Bob, not exactly a corporate shill, would have felt about that?

* Do Parisian residents of Le Quartier Latin know that they are living in gross violation of international copyright law? And why won’t the UN or Interpol do its duty and enforce the will of the international community? There must be some weenie like Hans Blix in charge of policing.

* I had to look up what that “SM” attached to “groove” meant — according to this FAQ “SM represents an unregistered service mark. It is also an informal notification that there is a public claim as a service mark.” So that’s one more dumb hippie-ism I’ll have to drop from my vocabulary.

There wasn’t much chance of me attending these events anyway. I’m allergic to corporate parties, or at least to ones with a cash bar. Given my proclivity for ranting like this, the partygoers™ will have more fun® without me anyway.

I was happy to see that UbuWeb, perhaps the single most awe-inspiring repository of avant-garde artifacts anywhere on the web, has relaunched after a summer of rebuilding. I’m looking forward to diving into some of the Glenn Gould radio broadcasts that have just been posted.

An interesting aside relating to IP and Ubu’s attempts to host film clips:

We relaunched UbuWeb on September 14th with over 150 avant-garde films in digital formats for your viewing pleasure. Within hours, we received several hostile letters from representatives of filmmakers — all lawyers and business people, not the artists themselves — issuing cease and desist letters and threatening lawsuits. Every time, it seemed, we opened our inbox yet another appeared. We had little choice but to obey and as a result, we have iced the section — for the time being.

We never intended UbuWeb to take any money out of the pockets of these artists; rather we feel that simple exposure to even the most degraded, corrupted, miniscule, and compressed .avi would increase interest and exposure to avant-garde film, a field whose audience has long been in decline. Our idea was to make accessible the generally inaccessible, with the hopes that should you desire to see the film in all its glory, you will make your way to the nearest theatre showing them (although there are very few) or find better copies on DVD. UbuWeb was never meant to be a substitute for the experience of viewing a film; it was meant as a teaser, an appetizer, until you can get to the real thing.

However, the real thing isn’t very easy to get to. Most of us don’t live anywhere near theatres that show this kind of fare and very few of us can afford the several hundred dollar rental fees, not to mention the cumbersome equipment, to show these films. Thankfully, there is the internet which allows you to get a whiff of these films regardless of your geographical location.

Obviously, certain members of the film community did not share our sentiments. They would rather keep these jewels to themselves or a select few huddled in dark rooms.

One complaint read “Kenneth Anger is penniless and living in a shack, yet you are making his films available for free and taking money away from him?” To which we reply: if the current system of avant-garde film distribution was working so well, why would the great artist Kenneth Anger be living in a shack and not a mansion? Is this really a system to hold on to? Obviously, something isn’t working. If they really cared about Kenneth Anger, they would hope to expose his arguably-forgotten work to a non-geographically-specific digital savvy audience via the radical distributive possibilities of internet. Guaranteed, Mr. Anger would see his royalties soar as a result.

(Anger penniless? Perhaps Hollywood Babylon III really will happen.)

I’ve always been a bit surprised by Ubu’s continued existence given its overt defiance of copyright law. When I worked at TechBC, courses were forbidden to even link to this site lest we be indicted as complicit conspirators…