Day 1 for #dhsi2014 is overwhelming. You want to see and meet all the people you know (or admire from afar) through social media, reunite with old friends, start making new friends. There are almost 600 people here this year, and you realize that you won’t succeed, that the weekend will roll around quickly, and you’ll be tweeting people from the airport, apologizing for not finding the time to meet up.
But that is for later. For now, get to know the people in your class, make new friends, create new connections.
The twitter stream is going fast and furious, with the people from all 28 different courses describing the exciting things they will be learning and doing over the next five days. You wish you could be in all the places, learning all the things.
Let that go. There are other years, other opportunities, and enjoy the course you are in, all the things you will learn and do. Saved the shared resources for later. Remember the names of people taking the courses, so you can come back to them later to learn from them.
Don’t feel like you have to do everything, be everywhere, meet all the people, learn all the things, even though you might want to or thing you have to. Take the time you need to unwind, decompress, reflect, rest. Use this space, these blog posts to share, work-through, and geek out.
I’m working through issues around digital pedagogy, rethinking, relearning, reimagining. This is hard work already, being surrounded by dedicated pedagogues and really smart scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, getting comfortable around each other, getting ready to really work hard.
Lunch is looming, stomachs are rumbling, plans are being made. The rush continues. #DHSI2014 is marching on.