Banff, Canada. CC BY B.de los Arcos

Banff, Canada. CC BY B. de los Arcos

As I’m left to hold the fort at Milton Keynes headquarters while half the team relax in far away lands where the breeze brings no tidings of OER, I diligently take a break from academic writing to share with you the latest news from the hub.

If you were in Cardiff for OER15, there’s no use in telling you that it was a great little conference with huge keynote speakers. I’m not sure who the boss had to talk to, but with the weather sorted, my only complaint comes in the shape of a doughy bread roll with a lick of mustard and a Victorian piece of ham. (You were there, weren’t you?). There have been some fabulous (and more serious) blog posts than any I could attempt now, so let me point you in the direction of Marieke’s and Sheila’s, for example. Oh, and Cable’s piece in THE is also worth a read, and the waves.

A handful of days later, we were in Banff, Canada to take part in OEGlobal. Sorry Cymru, Snowdon you say? The Rockies beat you hands down. But this was no walk in the park: apart from presenting an update on our research and panelling on OER maps, many encounters of the good kind and conversations of quality happened, the best with old chums ROER4D and new friends GO-GN. We have an announcement to make concerning GO-GN… but not yet.

From Banff we travelled to Edinburgh to run a workshop on exploring openness at Heriot-Watt University. We’ll be doing a lot more work with the OEPS Project in the coming months, so if you are in Scotland and would like to host us to do a free workshop at your institution, get in touch; more information here.

I mentioned above that this post is a pause from ‘academic’ writing. It is easy to change writing style here but a bit more demanding to do it for a journal; it takes longer. But academic writing is in full swing: we all have writing assignments and by the end of the year, there’ll be a suit of open-access, refereed publications to delight young and old-consumers of OER-related literature. Also, the team reconvenes early in June and one of the most pressing issues for us to discuss is the open release of our most recent data. It’s coming, before the end of the summer, for sure.

Finally, where will you find us next? Catch Beck at the Open Textbook Summit in Vancouver, Martin at EDEN in Barcelona and me, well I’ll be here in IET, Jennie Lee Building, downstairs to be precise, to present at the CALRG conference. I don’t think I can convince Rob to present with me but I’ll try.

Have a good one!