I was at the ALT-C conference last week (I become Chair of ALT for this year, will try not to break it). I’ve noticed over the years that there are two communities at ALT (there are many more of course, but two main ones I think). These can be labelled practitioners who have started to use some ed tech, and more full time educational technologists. For the former group, Alt-C is not their normal conference, they may be physics lecturers, but they have started to use technology in an interesting way. This may well be their first time attending. For the second group, ALT-C represents the main UK conference in their field and they are more interested in critical thinking and practice.
Catering (not food, why did you think of food?) for these two audiences is difficult. It can be done within sessions easily enough as people tend to choose the type of session they prefer, and maybe conference themes help also. But there is a danger of them remaining quite distinct audiences who don’t really intersect. This is where keynotes play a vital role I feel. They are the one common session between sub-communities. If they are pitched right then they speak to both of them, and provide a common ground for discussion, a sort of unifying conversation. However, these two audiences can want different things from a keynote: the first group maybe to be enthused about the possibility of new technology, and the second some critical analysis of the theory and direction of educational technology itself. What pleases one may alienate another.
In this respect, I think ALT-C got it exactly right this year, as all keynotes appealed to both communities: Josie Fraser talking about trolls was something anyone with a Twitter account could relate to, and increasingly an issue as we encourage students to develop online identities; Lia Commissar debunked some educational neuroscience myths nicely, which resonated with the old timers and may have been new to some also; Ian Livingstone gave an engaging talk about his life which frankly would be a great keynote at any conference; Jane Secker gave an impassioned plea for copyright awareness that even made this hardened open access, Creative Commons hack sit up; Dave White and Donna Lanclos gave an entertaining closing talk on creativity in the digital world.
The keynotes can be viewed here if you haven’t seen them: ALT-C 2016 keynotes. This post is really a ‘well done’ but also linking back to earlier discussions in the year around keynotes. They may be a bit traditional in the day of the unconference, but they fulfil an important role when there are diverse audiences at a conference, so getting them right is important.