Reclaiming our Socials with Kerry Pinny

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Okay, welcome here to DS106 Radio Summer Camp. We hope you accept the mission to join

us on reclaiming our socials for the next hour.

I've just put down the

DS106 Radio Summer Camp. We hope you accept the mission to join us on reclaiming our socials for the next hour. I've just put down the

DJing hat. And fortunately, Taylor is here now at the helm, making sure the session runs smoothly.

And we have a very special guest who I'm so excited to welcome. So hello, Kerry.

Hi, Maren. Hi, Taylor. Hi, everyone on the DS106 Radio. It's lovely to be here. We've been chatting

before we started. We've got lots of things to talk about around social media. So hopefully,

it'll be an interesting hour for everyone involved. Great to be here.

Welcome, Kerry and welcome, Taylor. We are going to take it away in just a minute.

And I'm going to hand over to Taylor first, I think, just to kind of set the scene a little bit

about the journey Reclaim has been on reclaiming our socials. But I do want to give a shout out

first to someone who isn't here. And that is Alan Levine. And Alan, bless him, really inspired

the theme, you know, getting federated, getting open and federated here at the DS106 Summer Camp.

And actually proposed a session on this topic. And unfortunately, he's had to travel for family

visits this week. And I think he might join us for the plenary tomorrow for blog or die. But for now,

he isn't here, but we are. And we hope that if you are interested to check it out, check out

Alan Levine's Gasta at the amazing conference Kerry and her team organized the OER24 conference

in Cork earlier this year. If you haven't come across Alan's Gasta yet, I'll put a link in the

description box below. That's the link. And if you haven't been there, I will put a link in the

description box below. It is absolutely unmissable. It was so much fun. But now and with that out of

the way, Taylor, I'm gonna hand over to you. Maybe you can catch everybody up. Some people

may have not heard of what we've been up to. Yeah. So this is kind of a reunion in some ways

a reunion. I'm gonna call it a reunion tour. But this may be the only stop at least that's

scheduled for now. So but you know tour, it's just a nice, you know, sounds nice, but last spring or really,

It's really winter, I guess. We started, the three of us and Jim also, we did a couple sessions from like winter to spring, in combination with Alt, around exploring Mastodon. We called it Mission Mastodon.

Carrie made that amazing video intro that you heard the audio of just now.

And I got a link here for that if you're actually curious about watching those sessions. We do still have them all up. I'll drop it in the Discord right now.

But we basically explored at that time, you know, what is this Mastodon thing? And kind of talked out loud about our feelings about the social media landscape in general.

You know, we had just come off a festival.

A few months before that, with the purchase of Twitter and the whole situation over there.

And I think, I'm trying to remember, sometimes it's really hard to remember what you ramble about a year ago.

But I think we did a pretty good job of trying to, kind of with fresh perspective, explore this, you know, federated alternative of Mastodon.

While talking about why we felt it was sort of important to explore it.

What we didn't know, we were pretty honest about what we did and did not know, I think, and what we were learning along the way.

And then as part of that experiment, we actually spun up a temporary Mastodon server that only lasted for about four months.

The intention was to create it and then, or maybe it was like five.

I know, I think we deleted it in May and we started it in February. So March, April, May, four months-ish.

And I think that's the timeline.

I should have probably looked that up in time for this session.

But the intention was let's do this and then delete it.

And just so people can have a space to play in.

And that was a lot of fun.

We talked about all kinds of things around how to, you know, generally how to be on Mastodon and what's there and how to find people and stuff like that.

But we also even kind of explored a little bit some of the technical things about how to host a Mastodon server.

Not that you need to do that to participate in Mastodon.

But, you know, where Jim and I are coming from the perspective of a hosting company.

So we were interested in that.

And it was one of my favorite things I did last year because I thought it was a really fun, holistic look at this tool and technology and what it means kind of from, you know, nerdy technical things all the way to like societal things we even talked about.

So this is an extension of that conversation.

We'll look at it a year later.

So Kerry, do you want to jump in here?

And like, obviously, Taylor mentioned old and, you know, the membership at the time.

And you and I were still working at old together when we did this experiment.

So, but I'm excited to hear your perspective.

What is like reflecting on the journey we've been on?

What do you think about it now?

I think we kind of, we organized it really, didn't we?

At a time when a lot of our members...

And I think a lot of people in the kind of UK education sector were asking themselves the question of, oh dear, I'm not sure I like what's happening on Twitter.

Where do I go instead?

And we were getting lots of questions at alt about, are you going to have a server?

Are you going to host a server and people will join you there?

And we really hadn't, you know, beyond knowing Mastodon existed, we'd never even considered, you know, hosting a server or any of that.

We just wanted to give people a sense of the backend stuff that Taylor and Jim really helped us dig into through the process.

So, you know, our idea, Morrin, really was just to give people a safe space, wasn't it?

To begin with, it was just to say, here's a place that we'll try out, you know, come and have a go, see what you think of Mastodon.

You know, if we found there was, you know, real appetite for it, you know, we might have considered maybe having a sort of alt Mastodon server that we hosted.

But if nothing else, we just wanted to give people a place to play and a place to experiment.

And to have the kind of discussions that we had at the time, you know, through the Discord and through the, you know, the DS106 kind of network and the Reclaim network and community of people who, a lot of people were way far ahead, you know, much farther ahead in their understanding of Mastodon and how they used it than we were.

So there was a lot for us to learn, you know, from that process.

And, you know, I've joined Mastodon.

I'm sort of not particularly active on any social media now.

I think a lot of it, you know, we can come on to the wider social media landscape at some point.

But certainly those sessions really helped me to understand, you know, what, as somebody who just wanted to be in a space and join a community, how that worked and the concept of, you know, different servers and where you lived and how that impacted how you connected with other people.

It was just super useful, you know, for me.

And I think a lot of the people who joined in found it really useful because it gave them that early understanding of something that can seem quite complex from the outside if you're not used to this idea of federation and servers and things like that.

So I think it was really helpful and a really useful experiment, you know, and just a real benefit for our members at the time to have somewhere to play.

I remember, like, one of the things that I found was fascinating was to kind of look at, you know, the question around moderation.

Because obviously that's part of the federation kind of federated model is that if you're on a server, you have to kind of have server rules and what's kind of acceptable and what's not.

And I think, you know, ALT is obviously a large national organization with thousands of members.

And I think what one of the things we wanted to explore is, you know, how much money and how much resource and manpower or people power would it take to, you know, like, monitor something like that to keep it a safe space.

And, you know, we very quickly realized that being the arbiters of what would be okay to post on a particular platform seemed like such a minefield.

Particularly, you know, for like a membership body.

And I think we, you know, I found that piece of it really interesting.

Like, we didn't encounter any issues actually with the experiment.

Everybody played, you know, beautifully with each other in this temporary space.

But I could kind of see, you know, if you had a completely open network that people could just sign up to, which is, you know, what organizations like ALT, I think, were thinking about at the time.

I could see how this could quickly become, you know, something more complex.

I kind of still feel that way.

Like, now I haven't seen kind of an answer to that, you know.

And I love the work that Taylor and Reclaim have continued to do in kind of taking the federated model into lots of different channels.

You know, the ghost newsletters and the TV and the radio and on all of these pieces.

I think it continues to be a challenge.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's...

Carrie and I were kind of talking right before the session about, you know, it's been a year and a lot of things have changed since our last conversation around this.

But for I think me and a lot of people, the feeling is the same, which is my perspective is I want these federated tools to win.

And I think over time they will.

But I think the question for me is what amount of time are we talking about?

You know, is it a few years?

Is it a long time?

I don't know.

But because we're seeing and there were rumblings of this stuff even last year around this time of, you know, other big social networks like Threads supporting federation.

And now they are in some limited ways.

It's like an opt-in thing.

And it does some things.

But other things it doesn't do just yet.

But they promise more.

All that stuff.

But we're also seeing other tools like Flipboard, which is probably less people are aware of.

But it's been around a while as like a news aggregation thing.

And that has full federation support.

And we're seeing other tools spring up.

Ghost is one we've used for newsletters.

And they are openly and actively working on federation.

In fact, they have an amazing newsletter, of course, around their efforts in that space.

And so I'm really energized in a way that I was maybe tentative about last year because I was like, hey, I like this thing that exists, but I'm just not sure if it's where people are going to be.

And I'm maybe more convinced than I was even a year ago that the technology part is going to pan out and become more popular.

But what I'm still not sure about.

Is whether anybody cares, if that makes sense.

You know, like I explain this stuff.

My barometer for this, these types of tools often is my partner because I'll explain this stuff to her.

And she's pretty tech savvy and stuff.

But she'd be like, that's cool.

But what could I do with that?

And I'm like, that is the question, isn't it?

And so that's...

I think that's still where we're at.

That's where we kind of are in some ways.

We're seeing more adoption of this.

Hey, these tools should work together.

And what's encouraging to me is that we're seeing these come from like forces that I would consider healthy.

We're seeing more open source tools adopting this.

I would even describe the way Threads is doing this.

I don't really trust Meta as a company particularly as much as as far as I can throw them, you know.

But I do think that they're doing this so far in a good way.

And a way that may actually let people kind of interoperate throughout these spaces so far.

But it's...

What I don't know is if anyone...

If it will take off in like the sense that people will know, hey, I could follow people on other networks.

Or that they even know that that's a possibility.

I don't know.

That's going to take a long time.

And I don't know that we have answers there yet.

I don't know how you feel, Kerry.

But I think...

You know, I've been really struggling to...

Like, basically, I now have to be on everything in order to connect to the three people who are on that.

Like, you know, it's like...

I think because also obviously I've changed roles and I've kind of, you know, changed networks or broadened kind of the scope as part of that.

And so I've had to kind of make it up a lot of effort to try and connect with new people.

But also, like, I just...

I just don't have anywhere near the amount of, like, connections on anything that, you know, that I used to have.

And I'm really glad.

Like, my life is so much better without Twitter, I must admit.

And I had the privilege of being able to kind of switch it off completely when, you know, I changed roles.

I just took that decision one day.

And I don't miss it at all.

But I don't have the reach that I used to have, like, at all.

And I love, you know, like what Taylor said.

It's totally true for me, too.

Like, I tell people who I know, like, oh, I'm on Mastodon.

They're like, what?

What's that?

You know, they haven't even heard of it.

And, like, you know, it's the same on, like, threads.

Like, some, like...

Like, every week, once someone likes something, I post on threads.

And I'm like, yes!

Someone saw my post!

And it's just like...

It's just...

It feels kind of, you know, not pointless, but, like, it feels like a very different kind of place.

Like jumping into a void.

Yes, exactly.

We've been having this very same discussion with one of our strategic partners,

who's kind of asking themselves the same question about should we even be on Twitter anymore?

Because not, you know, not just for the very obvious, you know, issues around it,

but simply, if nothing else, because the engagement levels have dropped incredibly

because of the way the algorithms have changed and, you know, the kind of levels of engagement,

that we get on our, you know, main alt Twitter account is completely, completely, you know,

just hands down less than we ever got before.

And things like during our annual conference, you know, Twitter, we used to trend on Twitter and we just don't now.

You know, because there's just not that many people on there.

And it does, you know, I left Twitter probably before we started the Mission Mastodon kind of, you know, work last year.

But I miss the people.

And I miss, the bit I miss is the, that sense of community and the engagement that I used to get on Twitter.

And I made so many friends through Twitter and knew so many people through Twitter.

That's what I miss.

But I have not woken up, you know, and thought, I miss the really, the cesspit that Twitter otherwise, you know, has become at all.

But I feel you on the, you know, on the other side.

I'll post stuff on annoyingly.

And it makes me really sad.

But LinkedIn appears to be, at the moment, like the best place for me in terms of actually...

Don't mention it! It's so painful!

I hate it so much too.

But it's the only place where the people are.

And where people respond to me and talk to me.

Because, you know, and I know that so much of what you get out of social media is what you put in.

And how many people you follow.

And all of that stuff.

I totally realise that I'm being, you know, very lazy in my social media presence at the moment.

But, you know, it does feel sometimes like I'm posting and there's just nobody there.

You know, and like you say, you know, I'm on Blue Sky.

I'm on LinkedIn.

I'm on Mastodon.

You know, I could join threads.

I could join Instagram to connect with these people.

And I could join...

You could join everything and sort of just get the little pockets of people back.

But that sort of heart that was in Twitter of people in that community.

I really missed that.

Couldn't care less about the technology.

Yeah.

At all.

I don't know if I hate Teams or LinkedIn more.

LinkedIn is very weird for me.

But you're not alone in that at all, Kerry.

Like I hear that too.

I'm not personally engaging a lot there.

So I'm not seeing much there.

But I do hear that from folks.

And yeah, I don't know.

I wanted to mention eLearning Techie in Discord just mentioned,

don't forget how many years it took us to develop the massive network.

I remain optimistic that we can rebuild on Mastodon.

And I think that's true.

It is interesting.

Like for me, like I was never like on connecting on Twitter the way a lot of people I talk to.

Did.

I was always more of a lurker there.

But for me, the peak of that kind of thing was like, you know, early to mid 2010s.

I would even say maybe more mid 2010s for myself anyway.

But I had a Twitter account from like 2008, right?

And I know a lot of people who similarly signed up, you know, early 2010s or late 2000s.

And that took a long time to gain steam.

And I'm just not sure.

Yeah.

Like, are we going to see that again?

I personally am willing to bet that we're never going to see a concentration in the same way because there are more options.

And but I don't know.

And I'm not even sure if that's a good or bad thing either.

I'm just laughing at all of the comments around LinkedIn on the Discord.

Yeah.

Yeah.

100%.

I do feel like I need a wash for mentioning it at all or, you know, wash my mouth out with salt.

But unfortunately, at the moment, it is a thing.

But they're making me laugh.

These are really good.

Yeah.

I think this whole week's been like a real tonic, you know, for community and connection the way that I love it best, you know.

And I think that was a big motivation, I must admit, for being involved in organizing this event, you know,

because I thought, like, the kind of people who are crazy enough to come to a week-long radio summer camp that is free to attend and across all time zones and has completely, like, crazy scheduling will be just the kind of people who I want to connect with.

So it's a beautifully, you know, self-selecting group of hundreds of, you know, brave souls who are like, yes, radio summer camp.

This is what I need to do in August.

But I was reminded, Taylor, of this episode we did on Reclaim TV quite a few weeks ago now.

Do you remember one we did with Martin Hawksie, also an ex-Alt employee, where we talked a lot about community and community building and, you know, the kind of that sense of sort of lack of connection and loneliness that I think many of us are battling, particularly post-COVID.

You know, like, I work with loads of people.

Yeah.

I work with loads of people who love the hybrid working part and the flexible working part.

But being always remotely based at your desk, kind of not seeing a human being day in, day out, can be, you know, a really tough place to be when you then don't have anyone to connect with remotely either.

So, yeah.

Do you remember that session, Taylor, we did?

I thought that was a really related conversation.

I'll post a link to it in this corner as well.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I think that's a great one for folks to watch.

And very much related.

And, yeah, you know, and it's such a tricky thing.

I feel really fortunate.

Like, I work from home.

All of us who work at Reclaim work from home.

But I feel really fortunate to, like, my, you know, I have a wife and a kid.

And I see them all the time.

And during the summer, they're even home.

So every time I walk outside my door of my office.

Or, I mean, most of the day my office door is not closed anyway.

So I feel really fortunate in that, from that aspect.

And I really like working from home for all kinds of, like, mental health and, like, productivity-related reasons, too.

And for me, you know, I think it, I guess what I'm, this ramble, I'm trying to circle on a point.

And my point is that I really think it matters how you use these tools going into this breakup.

You know, like, I really think that's, to me, it feels like the common thing.

As we hear from folks who are, like, yeah, I use Twitter to, like, stay up to date with news and stuff.

And now I use something else.

And, like, that's, okay, that's not really a community.

That's, like, a feed, you know.

And you're reading it.

And there are other places to get that.

And probably, and I would argue, much higher quality.

There are other places to get that.

And always has been, you know.

And what we're hearing, I think, the most pain from folks is folks who had a community or built one.

And are, like, okay, so that's gone.

And I can go in these other places.

We can talk technology and how, you know, Federation could make these communities work across different platforms.

And that's all great.

And obviously, I've already ranted enough about that.

I really believe in that.

But it doesn't actually solve the problem.

It just doesn't solve the problem of where are the people.

And I don't know that there's going to be a clear answer to that.

But my thing is, like, well, we have to build it.

Right?

Like, we have to start over.

I would argue we have to start over and build in a sustainable place which isn't owned by a single billionaire or whatever.

But, you know, that's honestly arguable.

Like, you know.

And so that's why I love stuff like this.

Like this week's conference, Marin, that you kind of conceived of is because I do think communities come out of flashpoints like this.

And it's going to be interesting to see, you know, next week and the week after.

We're seeing more blogging, right, in our small community this week.

And obviously seeing lots on the radio.

Are we going to see people continue to be on the radio?

I would love to see that.

We're all busy.

I get it.

But I think things like this are how a big part of how communities emerge and grow.

So applaud to that.

Thanks.

I love that.

Yeah.

And I, you know, I agree with you, Taylor.

I think there is a lot of that, like, you need to put some stuff in to get that kind of cohesion.

But you also need to have some energy to do all of that.

And I guess, you know, that's what I think.

One of the things, you know, I want to give a shout out, you know, to both old and to reclaim, because I think there are two organizations, you know, I'm, I have the privilege to, you know, work with both.

And I think, you know, they are organizations that really get that sometimes you have to invest some time and stuff, even if it's not for the bottom line, you know, it doesn't make you a profit.

And no, there isn't a business model.

Sometimes in order to get to the things that you want to achieve, you just have to, you know, put in some resource, put in some time.

You just have to do the right thing, you know, to be kind of trite.

And I don't think that many organizations get that.

You know, they want the community to be there and profit from the community and, like, have, like, I can't remember how many projects I've been part of where the self-sustaining community of practice that shares excellence and networks with each other indefinitely without any support, moderation or resource is a deliverable.

But one thing I know for sure is that that doesn't exist.

You know, the self-sustaining people.

The self-sustaining communities is always labeled, no matter how you call that.

And I don't know, Kerry, if you have thoughts on that, but I kind of feel that, you know, that's where, you know, bodies like Alt and, like, some of the other communities that Taylor and I work with are, you know, are so important.

I think, you know, we've talked about it before, you know, you can't own a community.

Alt could make a space for one.

And one could fill it or not.

But you can't own a community and say this is the Alt community or this is the learning technology community or the education community or this or that or the other because there's, you know, overlapping duplications and, you know, liminal spaces that, you know, these things, you know, fill.

And it would be weird.

And it's always weird to talk about a community as if it is some homogenous group anyway.

But I think there would be...

There would be no, you know, we might want to help people find spaces and we might want...

We want to connect people.

That's the point.

You know, in things like our work with Amplify FE, you can't measure community.

You can't measure, you know, you can't necessarily measure impact based on followers or engagements or the number of people that have liked things on social media, because really, quite often, and as we've talked about a lot here already, the community itself actually exists outside of the technology often.

A lot of the people that I befriended on, you know, Twitter, I'm now friends with, but in a different space.

You know, communities aren't, you know, technologies.

Communities are the people that are on them.

And, you know, I think we've, you know, we, you know, Reclaim and ours, you know, we want to make spaces for people to come together and do interesting things with each other.

But we wouldn't, you know, we're not going to say, that's our community.

You can't go over there and do that over there.

We do that here.

And that's the only place that we do that.

Because it would make sense.

It would make no sense at all.

And it's not the way that communities, you know, really work.

And it's not the way that communities build and exist.

They're far too natural and, you know, ephemeral for that to be the case.

You know, like you say, the amount of things I've read where people say, we're going to have a community and we're going to build a community.

But you're not really doing that.

That's not really what you're necessarily meaning.

You're meaning you're going to have, you know, a team space and you're going to send people a weekly letter.

But that's not a community necessarily in the way that we might think about it.

You know, so I think as much as it would be easy as an organisation to go, we're going to build a community and we're going to own it.

And it's going to be our community.

And we're not going to let anybody else in.

It's just not how it works.

And I think the things that, you know, we've tried to do with Mission Mastodon and, you know, we're constantly rethinking about our socials as an organisation.

Let alone as individuals and people on our, you know, of our own deciding.

You know, we do think about the impact of what we're doing beyond just, you know, where the most hits are going to be.

You know, where the biggest engagement is going to be, which not all places do.

So I'm definitely with you there, Mara.

And I think, you know, I like one of the things I think that Reclaim does really well is these kind of events.

You know, these really just open, let's have a chat, see where things lead kind of events.

And, you know, the Discord in the background, you know, is a great way for people to come together.

And I think it's testament, isn't it, to the both organisations' sense of openness.

Because we could do this as a closed event.

You could, you know, you could sell tickets if you wanted to.

But that's just the, you know, antithesis of, you know, our values as organisations to completely lock stuff down.

To...

control it.

So.

Yeah.

I like that.

There's some good chat.

Yeah.

There's some good chat in here.

I agree.

Well, and I think...

I agree with Discord.

I think, you know, it's an interesting window into how, you know, I imagine at Alt, I know at Reclaim, we do, you know, a couple events in a year.

And some of them are completely free.

For anyone to come to and open.

And some of them we do sell tickets to.

Right?

And that's always a complicated thing.

Right?

Like of...

Not just, like, who do we want there?

That's not really the conversation, actually.

It's about, like, time and energy.

And what it's going to take to put something on.

And what the point of it is.

Like, what is this event for?

And I imagine those conversations are, like, times 11,000.

When you're...

When you're an organization like Alt.

And so...

You know, you've got to pay the bills.

To some extent.

Yes.

You've got to pay the bill.

You know, and you could.

But the thing is, you know, every event that you could do, you could choose to monetize.

You know, you could...

You know, you could have, you know, put tickets on this and ask people to pay.

But, you know, all those things are choices.

You know, and they're all choices that, you know, we make every time we do anything that we do.

And, you know, I certainly think...

You know, from my experience...

Reclaims, you know, another organization that is more on the side of open than it is on the side of closed.

You know, which...

Which is good for everyone.

You know.

And I think there's...

There's a point here as well.

You know, when we talked about this event, one of the reasons why, you know, Jim, like, you know, gave the green light and allowed us to put on a week-long event is because it's radio-based and it's got extremely little overhead in radio.

And, you know, we're not delivering it.

You know, like, we are sitting here.

Like, we're not on camera.

No one has to post-produce anything.

You know, Taylor's worked his magic every day to be able to put the MP3 recordings up online immediately.

But, like, if this was an online video-based conference, you know, A, I think it would be terrible.

But also, it would be a completely different...

You know, it would be a completely different, like, overhead of producing all of that.

Making sure all the slides are there.

You know, making sure that's happening.

And, like, in this case, because it's audio-only, you know, we've investigated for weeks how we could make it more accessible.

Like, with recordings, with transcripts.

You know, what if you can't listen live?

What if you don't have bandwidth?

What if you, you know, can't hear?

You know, we've tried to make it as inclusive as we can.

But at the same time, tried to make it, you know, as cost-effective as possible to keep it completely free.

And I think nowadays, you know,

a lot of events, they really just think about exactly what you said, Kerry.

That monetizing model, you know?

Sort of, if you're a live speaker, they don't really care how your live experience is.

You're just there to produce some content that they are then going to post-produce

so they can sell that to the people who've bought an online ticket for the next month.

And, you know, I appreciate that business model, absolutely.

But I think it sort of means that events often become just content production kind of opportunities rather than that sort of, you know,

immediacy of conversation and sort of impromptu fun that we've been able to have this week.

And I think, you know, that's one of the real privileges of having a business like Reclaim say,

OK, you know, some of our resources are going to go into this community activity that is not going to generate any money,

but is going to hopefully, you know, put our kind of intentions into action.

And I think that's really exciting.

So, like, you know, I know not everything can be like that.

I'm not advocating for that by any means.

You know, there has to be a whole spectrum.

But I think the radio really allowed us to, you know, push the boundaries of that.

And I think that's the beauty of the medium.

I think it's a really nice, you know, it's a really nice way to do an event.

You know, you know as well as anybody what it's like to try and put an in-person, you know, event on, let alone a full online conference.

You know, so, you know, this is a really nice, as you say, like low effort way to bring people together.

And do interesting things and chat.

And having the Discord in the background, you know, just adds a whole other sort of dimension where people can actually join in.

You know, I feel like we should have some sort of, like, phone-in contest or something where the, like, first person to phone in wins something.

Or, you know, something like, you know, they do on radio.

It just feels really nice to have the interaction, which, you know, you don't often get.

You know, sometimes you go on to, like, sessions and it is like you're on a Zoom call or something and you can't see anyone.

You're just talking.

So it's nice to have that dimension of the Discord in the background as well.

It always works really well.

Yeah, actually, just because you mentioned the dial-in thing, I think we should give a shout out to Pilot, one of our colleagues here at Reclaim, who is doing a role-playing call-in show tomorrow to round off the conference.

So that sounds like the most fun thing that you could do.

And if you are on the scheduling side for the conference and you scroll all the way to the end, the last live session is long-time listener, last-time caller.

And this is a post-apocalyptic role-playing game about a radio station broadcasting at the end of the world.

And it will take live call-ins.

That's the way it works.

So you can call in live.

And I believe, Taylor, if I'm right in saying, Pilot is still looking for willing participants.

Who want to call in tomorrow.

So if you're in the UK, this is 7 p.m.

If you are in the Eastern time zone, that will be late afternoon.

Is that right?

2 p.m. maybe?

Yep.

Yeah.

I see we've got Martin on the Discord trying to fill some more copies of those books.

They're currently filling up your attic.

Do you need some more space?

That's what's going on here.

Are they signed, Martin?

That's the key thing.

If they're signed, people will be into it.

I couldn't agree more with everything, you know, about the audio format.

And I think it introduces so many...

It is an accessibility win in some ways.

It is, I think, a, you know, limitation is the...

What's the phrase?

Limitation is the something of creativity.

Wow.

Can't remember the phrase I'm thinking of.

But my point is, the limitations of an audio format force people to be creative, I think,

with some of those sessions.

And we've absolutely seen that up to this point.

And I'm confident we will continue seeing that to the end of the week.

You know, yesterday, we had the session from Brian Lamb and the TRU folks that was like

this huge audio production.

And the old EdTech mansion, eLearning Techie, like, that was...

We've had some, like, really well produced sessions.

We've produced audio for this that I have not experienced in a video conference before.

So, that's been really cool.

And it's possible because it's in some ways easier to produce that type of audio than it would be if you also had to have accompanying video.

I have to say, though, Taylor, we are very lucky that Dom Pates and his colleague, the eLearning EdTechie, were able to join us for this one session.

But I think Kerry has a lot of Dom Pates goodness lined up, right, Kerry?

Because the old conference rocks conference radio.

And, you know, I've been a little bit behind the scenes on that.

But I saw, right, that Dom is coming back this year.

Tell us a bit about what's in store because the ultimate conference is coming up in just a couple of weeks in Manchester in the UK and on the radio and online.

Is that right?

It is. Yep.

So, we've got these...

We've got DJ Dom again.

We did it for the first time last year.

Dom sort of spearheaded Altsea Radio where we had lots of kind of, you know, behind the scenes kind of radio broadcasts.

And people just played tunes that they liked or, you know, people like we're doing here had discussions and things.

And we had some of our award winners kind of talk about what they've been doing on the radio.

And we'll be doing that again this year.

And Dom does a great job of making a really big job for himself

by having a really great schedule of, you know, sessions throughout the day.

And makes a lot of work for himself.

But it's always really good.

And that will be...

I think it's a Thursday night show that will go out through live throughout the conference.

And we'll have some pre-recorded stuff and some live stuff throughout the conference.

And that's 3rd to the 5th of September.

And then, as usual, we will have our keynotes as well.

Our three keynotes each day will be live streamed to YouTube as well.

So people will be able to join us for those as well.

And then, as we always do, in a few months' time after the conference,

we also make the sort of recordings from all the sessions, you know, publicly and openly available as well.

So there'll be plenty to dig into from the conference this year.

And we're in Manchester in the UK this year.

If, you know, anybody fancies a trip, you know, there's still tickets.

There's still time.

Got to get that shill in while I've got the chance.

But, yeah, we're really looking forward to this year.

And Dom's, you know, radio show.

The radio part always adds that really, just that really nice extra dimension for people who can't be there.

You know, that just an extra something to the whole thing, which went down really well last year.

So, yeah, definitely, definitely big fan of the audio, additional audio track to the conference.

It seems to work really well.

Yeah, I'm really gutted that I can't make it this year for the first time in 15 years.

You're allowed a break.

After organising, you know, 15 years' worth of conference, Maren.

We'll let you have a year off.

It sounds absolutely amazing.

And I guess, like, you know, it made me kind of think, like, we were talking this week, Kerry, about, you know, can we get people on air doing more regular radio scheduling here on DS106?

But also kind of it made me think a little bit about the future.

You know, how can you keep that sort of nice conversation going?

And I wonder, like, you know, maybe we've got about just under 15 minutes left.

Wonder whether we should talk a bit about, you know, what's next?

Because I know, like, Taylor is going from strength to strength with Team Reclaim and there's all sorts.

Taylor, I hope you will tell us about the custom pod session you've got coming up, because that is, I think, a great, like, piece of the audio federated piece that we're looking at.

But yeah, maybe we can all kind of go around.

And chat a bit about what we think is next.

So, yeah.

Do you want to jump in with that?

Sure.

And actually, we have kind of a couple things to point people to in that realm.

So, we did do a session a couple weeks ago, actually, on Castapod, where I set it up on Reclaim Cloud and in shared hosting.

It works in both places.

We are actually using it on our shared hosting service for this conference.

And by that, I mean it costs, you know...

The shared hosting service that costs, like, $30 a year is what's hosting the conference recordings.

And it seems to work fine.

I kind of wanted to use this as something of a stress test.

And so, I can point people to that.

If you're curious about Castapod, I am, so far, really enjoying that tool.

It's a little bit of setup that we go over in the video.

There's no installer or anything for it.

But you could watch the video and reasonably follow that along.

And make your own Castapod.

And it's a nice audio hosting tool that also lets you upload transcripts, which is what we were looking for.

But it also has federation features, which is cool.

You know, linking it back to this conversation in some ways.

So, you can actually follow it on Mastodon.

And when new stuff gets uploaded, it'll show up in your feed.

And because it's a podcast tool, you can, of course, put it in a podcast player as well and publish it to...

We're not doing the publishing to directory.

But you could do that, too.

So, that's really neat.

And then, in a couple weeks, we are actually going to do a session on how to make your own radio station.

Kind of holistically.

And we have talked around this.

There's plenty...

I mean, if you put the word AzuraCast into Reclaim TV, there's things.

But I thought it would be nice to have kind of a revisit and like a start to finish little thing people could watch.

On how to set up AzuraCast.

How to make like a nice phone.

How to make a nice front-end page to it like we have for DS106 Radio.

And we probably won't get into all the broadcasting things you could know.

It's actually kind of hard to make a stream about how to stream.

Like in that meta way.

But we'll cover all the technicals that you would need to know on like how to make an internet radio station.

Which is kind of cool.

And, you know, as you were mentioning before, the audio world...

While there's definitely things to learn, it does make a lot of this stuff easier.

You know, me downloading...

Or sorry, uploading these recordings.

I do that in like less than an hour at the end of my day each day.

Because it's really not much to download.

And it's not much to make transcripts.

You know, I'm using this tool to generate the transcripts.

And that's the longest part of the entire process.

So...

I can't say highly enough or how much I recommend the tools we're using.

But also making audio stuff in general.

It's a great format.

Yeah.

I have to say I love that.

I'm not sure I'm not going to try and set up my own radio station.

Just so I can be on the radio whenever I fancy.

Like I'm so used to playing to an audience of one.

Like I think this could be great.

So that is really inspiring.

But I also, you know, I'm obviously deep into kind of my podcasting adventures.

And I've been experimenting with like audio in different ways.

For like, you know, for courses.

And for keeping in touch with people.

And I've even started kind of audio blogging.

Because I've been trying to spend a little bit less time in front of a screen.

And more time kind of outdoors.

So the other day I tried blogging.

With my voice recorder on my phone.

Whilst I was dog walking.

So and then I used the transcription software to transcribe it.

And then I did make some very light edits.

Just to kind of like my accent isn't recognized with the transcription software very nicely.

So there are certain words that it always gets wrong.

You just blew my mind.

That's an amazing idea.

I love that.

I'm absolutely going to steal that idea.

Like voice recorder dog walk blogging.

Taylor, it's the walk and blog.

It's the walk and blog, yeah.

I thought, hey, I have walking meetings.

I do walking coaching.

Why not blog and walk, you know?

So yeah, I've done that.

I'll post the link in the chat.

It's a bit of a disjointed post.

But it's certainly, it's nice and rambly.

You get the feel for it.

But yeah, I think when it comes to social media.

Like I've definitely, you know, I'm a big fan of Buffer.

And that has taken the pain out of some of me.

But I do like my distributed presence.

And, you know, like running my own business.

Alongside the kind of work I do with Reclaim.

And obviously I mainly do the coaching and stuff now.

I do need to be on social media for work.

And so I like Buffer.

It's a great tool.

I think if you haven't come across it.

That I find it's making the scheduling easier.

When you make one post for like different platforms.

But I must admit.

I really enjoy being on social media.

A lot less.

And while I do miss the conversations that I used to have sometimes.

I have found not spending as much time online very liberating.

So I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

And I have been enjoying that.

So what about you Kerry?

What are your kind of thoughts of where we are at?

And where you're going from here?

Totally the same as you in terms of do I really miss.

I miss people.

And I miss talking to people.

And as Taylor says.

We may have to just find different spaces for that.

And do the work to recreate those.

But that's the bit I miss.

I don't miss checking socials all the time.

In part because there's almost not enough going on.

On any one of them to really keep those endorphins flowing.

There's just not enough there to keep my attention.

But I don't miss it.

And I think in the long term.

For Alt in general.

We do need to think about our presence on Twitter.

And where we want to go with that.

And kind of what our general social media purpose is.

Because if it's purely broadcast.

Is that really worth doing?

Is that really doing anything helpful for anybody?

And if we want it to be more than that.

Then we need to make a concerted effort.

To do more with it.

And use it more.

But I thought it was interesting.

You talking about podcasting.

Because we've been having the same kind of conversation.

Around our MP5E project.

And the podcast that they create.

Which is where do we put it where the people are?

What platform is the best platform to put our podcast on?

Where are we going to be able to find people?

And it seems to be the case everywhere.

That no matter what sort of medium you're using.

Trying to find where the people are.

Is really difficult.

And so this concept of federation.

And the adoption of that.

Being able to be more interoperable.

Across lots of platforms.

Will help massively.

With that question.

For individuals like us.

Who just want to find people.

And have that easier to do.

But also as an organization.

For us to be able to share useful things.

With our members.

And our wider community.

In an easier way.

So there really is a space.

For this sort of federation.

And better interoperability.

It's just all the things.

That we could go on about all day.

The billionaires.

And profits.

And the reasons for not doing it.

But the reasons for doing it.

Are just really obvious.

And I hope that's the way things go.

But I'm certainly not in any.

On a personal note.

Any hiding towards.

Doing more social media.

I'm kind of.

It's been so long now.

That I can't really see.

Like you said Maren.

I haven't missed it enough.

To almost spend the energy on it.

Again.

I've put it elsewhere.

I really.

I love your take on this Kerry.

Because your community is so big.

As well.

There's a lot of complexity to think about.

But just.

I wanted to bring up one point.

That Jim mentioned.

I think in one of the sessions yesterday.

About openness.

And WordPress.

And how important it is to own your content.

Because.

So I've been having lots of trouble.

Getting my podcast.

In different platforms.

And recently.

Like Google said.

I was losing down.

You now have to put your podcast on YouTube.

And I thought okay.

I don't really want my podcast to be on YouTube.

But you know.

Let's see what happens here.

And I did ask the people who are listening to the podcast.

And apparently many of them use YouTube to listen to it.

And I was like okay.

Let's try this.

So I failed at all counts.

I failed at creating an account.

Once I had an account.

I failed at uploading my podcast into YouTube.

You know.

And I completely failed.

And then like Google kept not being able to verify my identity.

Hence I couldn't import the RSS feed.

So it wants me to upload every episode manually.

So it means that I have to create a video of each audio file.

That I then have to upload.

And after I tried this for two days.

What I ended up with doing is a 30 second video.

Of a half an hour audio file.

That it then rejected for copyright reasons.

Fail.

At all counts.

You know.

And like when you come across platforms like that.

You're just like.

You know I get it.

You basically want me to make a video podcast.

Which I refuse to do.

Because that's killed the whole point for me.

And I'm really worried about the video piece.

You know.

And I guess.

I know in Reclaim we're big fans of video.

And I respect that.

But I really want to keep the audio piece.

So no more on Google and YouTube.

I'm sorry.

You have to listen somehow else.

That makes I think perfect sense.

I will say that whole thing.

It's not just you.

I listen to a lot of podcasts.

And I can probably count on two hands.

The amount of podcasts I personally listen to.

Where they've complained about this.

Oh good. I'm sorry.

It seems like a disaster.

And a company the size and scale.

And technical ability of Google.

Could probably figure it out.

Also I'm sorry.

Were they having that much trouble.

With a single website?

I know.

What the actual hell.

I will calm down a little bit.

But I am also.

I haven't even gone through this.

But have seen enough.

It's just bizarre.

It's bizarre.

Give me my self hosted radio station.

Any day.

You know.

Because I'm not going to start making video.

Out of like four years of podcasting.

Which you know.

Anyway.

I think we're nearly at the end.

So I'm sorry about the little YouTube rant in there.

But I couldn't help it.

Just because we were talking about.

Where to put the podcast.

And I had the same question.

Where do people listen?

Apparently they listen on YouTube.

I'm just like don't listen on YouTube.

And apparently if they're already listening on YouTube.

Then Google has the technical ability.

To ingest the podcast.

The way it already was.

So I don't understand the problem.

Taylor.

You live in a utopian world.

Where Google does helpful things.

Yes apparently I do.

And yeah.

I don't know.

I'll drop the Google thing.

It kind of goes back to what we were talking about.

Before we started.

We were talking about.

Forgive the expletives.

The inshitification of the internet.

And we were talking about.

You know.

Some things we'd watched around that.

And it just feels like.

It just is completely that whole.

I've tried to upload it.

It won't work.

It can't get my identity.

I finally got it to upload.

Then I get told it's copyright infringement.

It's just the perfect kind of metaphor.

For the state of the internet.

And where we're going.

With so many of these things.

And the amount of things you start using.

And then Google decides.

You know.

You could probably do a whole hour.

Just on those things.

I think everybody feels your pain.

Yeah.

It just goes back to what we were saying about.

Keep your content.

Keep blogging on your own platform first.

Where you send it after that.

That can be anywhere.

And that might change.

But keep your stuff.

Keep your content.

Taylor and I have been through a wonderful transition.

From my own blog.

To my own shared hosting server.

Where I've been living for a very long time.

Very happily.

Onto Reclaim Press.

And I was really petrified.

Not because Taylor did anything.

It was so smooth.

But I just realized how precious it is to me.

To have that stuff.

To have my history.

That I can take with me.

And I think that's where.

That sort of open piece comes back to me.

And I think that's where I kind of think.

The future of federation is for me.

I want to keep my stuff.

And then I'll federate it somewhere else.

Like wherever that may be.

But I think the home that I want.

My own domain.

Is what it all comes down to.

I include my podcast in that.

I have downloaded every episode.

So now I have it.

You're not getting it YouTube.

Even companies just making it.

So you can get your stuff.

In one easy way.

Would be a humongous.

Helpful step.

But obviously.

There's lots of reasons why they won't do that.

But yeah.

I totally feel you on that one.

It would be nice if we could just have our stuff.

When we want it.

Yeah.

Well and you know.

Maren to be fair.

You've probably seen me flail.

And mess up enough stuff on Reclaim TV.

That me moving your blog.

I could see some fear.

When you're trying to do it.

And you go uh oh.

Oh no.

Not at all.

And now it's on Reclaim Press.

I'm super reassured.

Because it's got backups.

And it's beautifully fast.

And I'm just like phew.

Safe.

I think it's an illustration.

When you're creating.

I would argue anything that's valuable to you.

And writing.

And audio stuff.

I would envision how you would get that stuff out.

And that may be.

You may need to ask someone else to help you.

But like.

Potentially.

Or you have to do some research.

But that's important pre-work to do in a lot of cases.

And the fact that your blog is on WordPress.

Means you have all kinds of options.

You could take it all kinds of places.

And I think the same applies with podcasts.

When possible.

It's audio files.

So you can move those around.

But maybe even the platform.

Could be a consideration.

Now there are more self-hostable things.

That could be something potentially.

I always advise people.

To think the end.

Think through the end of a project.

At the beginning.

If possible.

I think that's a good.

That's essential advice in every way.

And Kerry and I have cleaned up enough.

Inherited legacy projects.

Of fun.

Of all descriptions.

And I think quite a few people in the audience.

Like Tom Woodward for example.

Would have been on that journey with us.

So yeah.

Thinking about the end of a project at the beginning.

I think Taylor that's gold dust.

And maybe a good point.

To wrap up our conversation today.

I know our colleague Jason.

Is waiting in the wings.

Ready to rock lunchtime tunes.

Yeah so I think with that.

We're going to hand over to Jason.

And thank you all for listening.

See ya.

Thank you everyone.