Navigating the Stream
On 9 June, our intention was to continue the process with a talk by Dr Eric Lybeck, building on Christopher Newfield’s talk. Unfortunately, this was impossible due to a fault in Eric’s computer which was being used to both render the video and livestream the talk.
You can watch the failure of our experiment here:
As with any experiment, some of this is trial and error — and we are learning and adapting as we go.
In fact, we want to let you know that we will be pausing the process for 2 months to work out some kinks in our plan.
Specifically, we wanted to develop an unusual new format for this — and we hope other topics of interest. We want to take advantage of new ways of broadcasting using livestreams, while also upgrading the quality of self-produced academic talks for conferences.
We want essentially more interaction and more production quality — and we are using existing technologies to see what we can make happen. We are also moving our speakers and respondents around a bit like guinea pigs for this purpose — and one reason we’ve begun by experimenting on ourselves!
Here is an image Carl Fraser produced to demonstrate our current thinking on the processual format:
Each speaker is invited according to their expertise in the area of Critical University Studies or related interdisciplinary fields. The next speaker is invited as a respondent at the previous talk, opening the conversation to a wider live audience. The following event would have the respondent as the new speaker and in this way the process is a linked series of chain reactions.
The problem was our ambitious plan to hold fortnightly events without a clear and settled forward agenda has led to difficulties securing the next links in the chain, particularly during the summer following a challenging year.
Perhaps the most important thing to do at the moment is to pause, reflect, rest and recover. Hence the decision to pause for two months while we regroup and relaunch the experiment in late Summer.
What we will do in the meantime is use the existing talks and discussions to fill in our schedule for the next academic year.
So, please do join us for one more initial talk and live discussion surrounding Eric Lybeck’s talk on a Civic Ethic for Education.
As with our original plan, Dr Zoe Hope Bulaitis will be respondent and Dr Carl Fraser will host.
Zoe will then give the first talk in August and we have tentatively confirmed with Dr Mark Carrigan, organiser of the Post-Pandemic University collective as our next respondent and then our fourth speaker.
