I call them Autummisms. These little ways that I process the world. They are ever growing and changing. They are in-process and; not complete. So… take this for what it is worth. I’m going to warn you up front – it is an acronym

and

Yes

there are two O’s in the middle.

Now, how the hell do I unpack this?…

People are always asking us ‘what is Virtually Connecting?’ Often, we say it is a movement and point them to the manifesto. Let’s start there – movements.

What do I mean by a movement? Well, I think about the recent presentation at the AMICAL conference in Rome by Maha Bali and Jim Groom where they talked about ethos.

From Google (kind of):

“e·thos
ˈēTHäs (tho I say ēTHōs) -noun:
the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations.”

So, yes I think that a movement is based in an ethos. Starts from an ethos. Creates and grows through the development of an ethos. Goals and outcomes can be developed around an ethos but I don’t think that a movement enacts from a goal or an outcome so much as it does from an ethos. 

The other thing about a movement is that the start date can be kind of fuzzy…

And end dates…

yeah those don’t exist so much till after the fact. We can look back and say that we see the start of a particular movement tied to an event of some kind; a political upheaval, a gathering, a protest, a leader being elected, etc. And the end date tied to this one person’s death or this one law being changed. But it is not till after… that we see concepts such as starts and stops.

As I write this I’m at the New Media Consortium’s Summer Conference with Helen DeWaard and I’m testing out a one-way live streaming video app while we walk the river and Maya Georgieva asks us how we got involved with Virtually Connecting… how did it start… for us???  and Helen reminds me it was #rhizo15.

Did the event #rhizo15 spark the movement that is VC? Maybe not for everyone… but for Helen and me… well… let’s just stick with maybe… for now.

In the moment, a movement just sort of is.

…So yeah, movements.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about, and something that is tightly tied to Virtually Connecting, is my affinity for small group conversations. I think that there is an untapped potential for the power of small.

I’ve talked before about my idea of the Interpersonal Multitudes Barrier (IMB); which states that in a synchronous conversation that the more people you add to that conversation, the less intimacy you have – (or maybe have potential for?). It is a theory – I think I might have stolen it. Lately, I’ve been feeling it is flawed as I wonder about the histories and diversities surrounding personalities in a sync convo and how they might contribute more so to intimacy than the size of the group.

Still, I can’t help but feel like quantity matters (HA! perhaps an organization is in order). I am aware of the Dunbar number but that has more to do with relationships – I’m just talking about conversations. Real-time conversations.

I digress…

I know I promised you an acronym. Sigh. I’m struggling with that part. Especially, cause it is a double O acronym and so many people have ripped off Dave Cormier’s “MOOC”… Do I really want to be another one of those guys?

But… but… (yells that little voice) it is more than an acronym… It is a metaphor, this particular Autummism, (though I know those too are problematic)… {… is she speaking of metaphors or Autummism’s being problematic?}

Last week I went to the T3 conference in De Pere, Wisconsin at St. Norbert University. T3 is a small local conference and I’m not sure it is the kind of thing that most people travel for – it was mostly faculty and various acatechies from St. Norbert and surrounding areas. So, why travel by car for something like this? Well, I was not that far away, St. Norbert is a very similar kind of school to the one I work at, and there was an opportunity to learn from some of my favorite people: Sundi Richard, Daniel Lynds, Bonnie Stewart, and Dave Cormier.

Dave and Bonnie keynoted – it was a real treat to see them present together. Dave took a historical perspective and laid out the story of how we got where we are now. Reminded me how important it is to remember. How the connections often go back further than we realize and how histories are collected from differing perspectives. 

Bonnie did the color lines exercise, which I saw her do in Cairo at a Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute (no I wasn’t IN Cairo but was watching live stream). Here’s how it works: She has each person who is listening turn to someone else and tell them their favorite color. Then, she has them turn to another person and tell them the favorite color of that last person that they talked to… in the next step she has everyone visualize the colors as threads that are connecting each person to one-another.

So, I’m thinking about those threads, and movements, and the power of small when I come back from T3. I’m on backchannel with Maha Bali and Rebecca Hogue one night and again it comes up – what exactly IS Virtually Connecting?

…We played with CMOOCC (Connectivist Mini Open Online Conference Convo) and there was some talk about how we are this perpetual cMOOC (that lower case c bugs me) fueled by conferences…

And then I’m thinking about the idea of small, and I’m thinking about movements, and I’m thinking about the threads of connections, and I’m thinking about collective history… and…

L – Little

O – Open

O – Online

M – Movement

Followed up by “Weaving connections through space and time, baby”

Pops out

And a loom is a technology

And it creates a whole out of parts – parts which happen to be threads

And it does this by connecting the parts together – weaving them into one another

And when done right that whole is beautiful

(And when done wrong…

Well, you know how it is when things are done wrong – right, dear reader?

Disclaimer: It is easy [some may say casual, irregular, or haphazard] to use one’s imagination to draw conclusions to an eventual dystopian [or utopian] end.)

Again…I digress.

So, what is a girl to do when faced with a rip-off acronym and a beautiful metaphor?

Well, when she is attending the NMC Summer Conference and has a VConnecting session scheduled with Gardner Campbell she simply asks “So, I have this theoretical construct that I’m working on and I’m wondering if you could tell me if it is cheesy or… if there might be something more to it?”

Let’s just say Gardner gave his blessing. He also reminded me that loom is more than just a noun … it is also a verb depicting something on the horizon. And it seemed rather appropriate given that we were at NMC talking quite a bit about horizons.

And I’m thinking if LOOMs might be bigger than just VC and I think of the #FTTE online gatherings (and how Bryan Alexander always takes that mingle moment – where he let’s participants break into small groups), and I think of #IndieEdTech and their small gatherings, and I think of #DigPed and and the various #DigPed Lab Institutes which end up being these small group intensives (still room for PEI and Fredericksburg I believe – early bird for PEI ends on June 20th… just sayin..)

And then I start wondering if LOOMs can be people – like single people. Rather than groups of people. But that is crazy because the M is for movement and a person can’t be a movement. But then Helen and I go out to dinner with Bobbie and Jen Lane and Jen says that people can be LOOMs because people can independently hand weave threads to make connections too and that maybe they can be even more skillful and nimble about it because they are individuals.

I’m still unsure how I feel about the LOOM as a construct but as I explained it to people they got a kick out of the idea and it put a smile on their faces so I decided to blog about it. I like that it is focused on the idea of weaving connections – not just weaving nodes or people. But I think that point is subtle and I worry it could get lost. I also worry that it might get boxed in by the little aspect – some forgetting that when dealing with connections things can grow quickly. But I’m trying to work on my addiction to worry so here it is world. LOOM – a Little Open Online Movement – It may be more than you thought at first glance. 

Image Credit Jakub T. Jankiewicz  “Loom in crystal ball” CC BY-SA