Join the dots

Wow,

What a huge four days. As I sit here at the end of it all I am torn between wanting to dump every idea in my head into words and going to bed and sleeping for a couple of days. I could prattle on about how good it was to put names to faces, the fact that we managed to put on a large conference which didn’t lose its relaxed feel (which was a big risk in my eyes which I think we managed to avoid), the quality of presenters such as David Jones, Michelle Moore and David Parkin, or for that matter the parallels between Parkin’s tirade on teamwork and its relevance (in my eyes) to social constructionism. I could also shower thanks on the delegates, co-workers, sponsors, co-workers, venue support staff and everyone else who helped make this Moot such a success.

I won’t bother doing any of this though, not because it isn’t important, but because this afternoon I think I had a moment where I realised the power of any community, and in particular the Moodle community which I feel proud to be a part of.

To set the scene, I was running a hands-on workshop on moving to Moodle 2.0 with a large group (sixtysomething). Day 3 of a conference, energy levels (mine anyway) quite low, and with the workshop starting off with multiple technical fails causing some catastrophic issues and big frustrations for all participants. Through pure chance, who should decide to sit in on the session other than Martin Dougiamas, and just to add some more interest, the awesome Jonathan and Michelle Moore from Remote Learner. To say that I was somewhat ruffled was an understatement – presenting a session which was going titanic while two of the most knowledgeable Moodle people going around and the Founding Father were sitting up the back watching me.

As technical issues were resolved, I kicked off the discussion about changes to the files area within Moodle, which to me is the most significant change in mindset that users will need to deal with in the move to 2.0 and in my opinion still needs some more thought before it will be in a state which will be what I’d call user friendly. I started to explain and show how files are managed differently in Moodle 2.0, and I could feel the room drop into a stunned silence, and before I knew it hands were shooting up like prairie dogs about how difficult it would be to do things the way they had been done in the past in Moodle given the changes.

What happened next was, to me, quite stunning.

The next fifteen minutes turned into a frank and at times blunt discussion between the group and primarily Martin about some of the challenges which some users would face in Moodle 2.0 given the changes to how files are managed. The group would throw questions at me, when I couldn’t answer them (which was most of the time) Martin would jump in and explain not only how it worked, but the problems which caused the functionality to change, which then led to ‘yes, but what about…’ type responses, which then led to his admission that sure, there are use cases which the team at HQ haven’t considered, and some embryonic ideas were thrown around about what might need to happen – all in a way which was totally open within the group.

Stop and think about that image for a bit. The head of a global software project with millions of users sitting down with a bunch of end users and kicking around ideas in an impromptu session without corporate spin, attempts at masking areas for improvement and trying to come up with ideas about how to improve the software, and at the same time shift the mindset of users to understanding why change needs to occur. I wonder how likely this would have been for any other piece of educational software.

One of the things I am constantly trying to get people to do is to contribute ideas and opinions to Moodle through moodle.org and the Tracker. I tell them that grumbling to me about something is a start, but grumbling to the community through these open forums is far better, and the ultimate is to contribute ideas to the Community about how to improve the software. I tell them to not ask what Moodle can do for them, but to ask what they can do for Moodle. I tell them that you do NOT need to be a developer, or to have any formal ideas about what constitutes good UI design, to contribute to the Moodle project – you just need to be willing to think, and to share. I thought to myself that if I could get people to make the conceptual leap that participating in the online Moodle community is no different to sitting there in a room with Martin Dougiamas then I reckon we’d end up with far more in the way of community input into Moodle, even if the involvement is already significant. I told the people there that if signing up for a Tracker account was too hard, then at least send me through the ideas and bugs and I’d log them on their behalf.

…if I could get people to make the conceptual leap that participating in the online Moodle community is no different to sitting there in a room with Martin Dougiamas then I reckon we’d end up with far more in the way of community input into Moodle

Ultimately, I realised that the varied perspectives of a group like that is the whole thing which makes Moodle tick, and that the more people looking at the software in its 2.0 beta form and contributing their perspectives back to the community, the better all future releases of Moodle will be. I thank Martin for being the kind of person he is, for being willing to listen, and for not just tipping out the door when the questions started, but for openly engaging with the community like he has done from the start.

I may not have faith that the new files management environment in Moodle is spot on just yet, but I do have faith that if we engage with the community then we will work it out – together – and that to me is the essence of why the Moodle community has thrived, and will continue to thrive, as long as we have a willingness to be an active part of it.

Six people signed up to the Tracker by the end of the workshop – and this is more important to me than all the technical fails in the world.