Join the dots

Its been a while since the last unofficial Moodlemoot update so I thought I’d round out the week by giving another glimpse into how the planning for the largest Moot in the Southern Hemisphere (we think) is going.

First some quick stats

So far:

• We have over 270+ confirmed delegates with about nine weeks left, so this is well on track to be a 350+ delegate event, which is fantastic;
• We have six very welcome sponsors on board: NetSpot (Diamond), The Learning Edge International, Echo 360, Pukunui Technology (Silver), e-Works and Elluminate (Bronze) – big thanks to all our sponsors;
• The Masterclass is completely sold out, and we have 73 people signed up to attend across the five workshops;
• Yesterday, after my mail out to delegates who hadn’t logged in to the Delegate Hub, we ended up having over 500 delegate-generated hits for the day, which is great since it shows how folks are engaging with the site;
• Five streams of presentations have been scheduled and filled, with just a couple of final touches to be made (hence the occasional gaps in the program); and
• The conference is now well and truly global, with international delegates and/or presenters from the US, UK, New Zealand, China, Indonesia and Japan – that I know of.

Hub access stats - big spike yesterday - excellent...

Now on to a few things that have stood out for me…

The Masterclass

Wow – the response to this has blown me away. All credit to Phil Marriott who was the one who came up with both the idea for the Masterclass, and the name Masterclass itself, so when these things start springing up post-Moot then remember it was Phil who thought of it.

We have 75 people confirmed for the Masterclass, which is beyond my wildest dreams when I started to craft the description and structure for it, and now the task ahead is for me, Phil, Curtis Bonk and Julian Ridden to get together over the next couple of weeks and make sure that we make this thing as good as it can be. I am really thankful for the feedback (good and bad) from people on my previous post on the Masterclass and would love to get more ideas from people. Over a beer with Tomaz Lasic in Perth last month it struck me how many similarities between what we’re trying to do with the Masterclass and what he is doing over at HQ with the Moodle Water course, and any time my own independent thought aligns with someone of the calibre of Tomaz I’m a very happy man.

A couple of people have asked whether we can get a bigger room and open up the Masterclass to more people, but the organising committee (with me in agreement) have decided that it should stay as it is for a number of reasons, some of them logistics related, and some of them to not want to bite off too much given that this is the first time a Masterclass like this has been run – that we know of. Either way, congratulations to those who got booked in, and if this is as much of a success as we think it can be then we might see if we can run more of these at a later date.

The Delegate Hub

The Delegate Hub

One of the big things about a Moot is that it brings people together in the physical world, which has been one of the reasons we’ve not toyed with the idea of broadcasting live sessions a-la at the iMoot. This doesn’t mean however that there shouldn’t be a vibrant online community backing the event, and this is what we’ve attempted to do in the Moodlemoot Delegate Hub, which contains a bunch of ‘Delegates only’ resources and activities for people who are attending the Moot. Note that if you’ve paid your registration fees and you have not received a login for the Delegate Hub then please let me know and I’ll send another login out to you – we’ve found that a few people had their welcome email sent straight to the spam bin.

I personally believe that getting involved in the Delegate hub is a really important part of the Moot for the following reasons:

1. It lets you find out who else is coming, and to connect with them through the Hub so you can work out who you’d like to catch up with at the conference before you get there;
2. It lets you view the interests of other delegates through the ‘tags‘ feature (shown), and to share your own interests, which means you’ll know in advance the people who have some common interests to you – which can be important if (like me) you’re painfully shy in large groups of strangers and would like to know someone you can talk to about a common interest;
3. It lets you have a place to ask all the questions that we as an organising committee haven’t thought of. We had one the other day where someone asked what the dress code was for the dinner – basic stuff but we just hadn’t put it anywhere. We have now!
4. It lets you pose questions to Curtis Bonk and Martin Dougiamas for their panel session at the conference – we will be giving them the questions to choose from and respond to during the session;
5. It gives you all the latest news about the conference from the organising committee; and
6. It promotes a sense of community, and that is what Moodle and Moodlemoots are all about!

Interests of the Moot delegates so far

So, if you’re a delegate and you haven’t yet logged in, then do it now – and while you’re at it then let us know through the forums about what other bits and pieces we could add to make the hub more worthwhile.

As you can probably guess, the Delegate Hub is a Moodle site, and yet again Moodle’s reputation as being the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of learning systems has meant that we’ve been able to put together a rich, interactive environment with zero coding and little effort on the whole.

Moodle 2.0 at the Conference

One of the things we’ve been conscious of is how perilously close Moodle 2.0′s formal release will be to the conference. Whether or not it is released in time for the conference, the Beta (Preview, whatever) version should be far more stable by then compared to what it is now (a blog post itself – will get to that one soon too I hope) and we’ve given preference to presentations with Moodle 2.0 content since it will no doubt be something that the community is keen to hear about. We’ll also probably let presenters know that if they need to ‘tweak’ their presentations to incorporate last minute Moodle 2.0 content (if it makes sense) then to go ahead. There are also the workshops, three of which specifically relate to Moodle 2.0 and which are being well filled so far.

In summary, there should be plenty of Moodle 2.0 talk at the conference to keep people interested.

And finally – the possum…

The Moodle Possum in happier times

Rumour has it that the much loved Moodle Possum from last year’s Moodleposium (get it? POSiUM and POSsUM?) will be making the trip to Melbourne for more madcap antics. This time though she might skip giving Martin Dougiamas a piggyback ride – the chiropractor bills after last time nearly made her too poor to buy any straw for her hutch in NetSpot’s basement over winter, and we don’t want that now do we…