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I feel a bit behind the curve in writing about Reclaim Open, but I suppose it’s better late than never. We’re still technically in June, meaning the in-person event was just earlier this month, and we still have the online recap coming throughout the month of July, so perhaps my tardiness may be forgiven!
Reclaim Open is Reclaim Hosting’s 4th biennial conference following Domains17, Domains19, and OERxDomains21. It can be easy to compare each conference to those preceding it, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned while hosting these through the years, it’s that each event captures a moment in time and creates a space for connection– however it may be needed or defined in that moment by each participant– and they’re all uniquely special. In some ways these conferences snowball and build over time; we take the lessons that we learn from one and embed them into the next one. In other ways, each conference is its own entity where a distinctive group of folks will converge, share ideas and inspire, and then part ways again. The conversations are always different, but the goal (at least for me when planning) is always the same: to create a space where folks feel comfortable to share, challenge, and build alongside each other.
OERxDomains21 came at a time during covid where connection and professional support felt more difficult to come by. That event was collaborative, powerful, and pushed boundaries – all while being completely online. Domains 17 & 19 were equally powerful, and reinforced art & creativity by taking place in various museum hotels (penguins & tv stack installations included).
While there were no penguins this go around, Reclaim Open was no different in how it carved out space for a community to join forces. In many ways, this conference felt like a reunion, celebration, and call to action all in one. The conference themes were perfect for this:
In April 1993, Tim Berners Lee open sourced the World Wide Web, and the ensuing decades of internet technologies bears the mark of that historic moment. Thirty years later, open source still remains central to building and providing an open web. For our 4th biennial conference, Reclaim Hosting plans to not only celebrate the history of the open web, but take stock of the present moment while exploring the future of Open. To this end we established 3 distinct, though always related, tracks wherein we asked folks to share their work around the past, present, and future of the open web. It was so fun to head back where it all began, and we had a blast welcoming web historians, creative tinkerers, digital humanists, instructional technologists, project admins, and open source advocates to Fredericksburg, Virginia on June 5-7, 2023.
Excerpt on reclaimopen.com
The past, the present, the future: going back to where it all began in Fredericksburg, VA and sharing stories with old and new friends; a celebration of how far we’ve come, marking Reclaim’s 10th year in business and the anniversary of the open web; dreaming up where we want to be and how the future of the web will shape that path.
Each time we dream up, plan for, and host an event like this, I always re-learn just how much work goes into hosting a conference and I have so much respect and admiration for folks that do this more regularly. Coordination for the logistics alone are no joke, and we added a bit of complexity this year by recording sessions, live-streaming and experimenting with Hybrid, and producing an on-the-fly documentary. These extra elements would not have been possible without the amazing Dream Team, and it was such an honor to work alongside them these past few weeks/months (years!) to make it happen.
In no particular order, here’s a list of some of my Reclaim Open highlights:
The Reclaim team dinner after the event where we talked about the future of green web hosting, inspired by Bryan Alexander‘s keynote, What might the web become in its next generation?
Unveiling the documentary, and hearing the impromptu, round-robin experiences from conference goers at the end of day 3.
Checking out Reclaim Arcade. Still so in awe with how that space has transformed, and that evening was a blast!
The way that Rajiv Jhangiani used storytelling and visual/audio aids in his keynote, Accept all cookies and continue: The many presents of the web.
I was really interested in juxtaposing elements of “old” with our techy, future-driven web conference as a way of thinking about how the past and future can intersect. It was fun to loosely play with this using color on the website, which was black & white until the week of the conference.
I also really enjoyed creating the conference programs, which ended up sitting somewhere between a newspaper and a zine.
The programs were created using Newspaper Club and their provided Canva template for the Digital Mini Magazine. I really love how these came together in the end, along with the other stickers and t-shirts we had on hand to showcase Bryan Mathers‘ fantastic artwork:
And because I’m always curious what folks use for other conferences… the name tags were created and printed using Conference Badge and the lanyards were purchased in bulk on Amazon. Stickers were printed through Sticker Mule, which we’ve used for years, and our collection of Reclaim Open t-shirts were designed and printed through Spreadshop on shop.reclaimhosting.com.
Back to the list of highlights– I loved the casual nature of the Unconference. The slower pace on day 1 felt like a great way to kick off the event.
Hanging in downtown Fredericksburg again and eating all the Benny’s pizza I could manage.
The power of A.I. Levine
And last, but certainly not least, I really loved witnessing other Reclaimers run the show. This was a true team effort and I’m so glad to have been a part of it.
One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is how schools can successfully run WordPress Multisite, Domain of One’s Own, and Reclaim Cloud Sandbox spaces together in a way that feels integrated and seamless. We’ve always led with the idea that these tools don’t compete with each other, and that actually the opposite is true: by running them in parallel to each other you can offer a little bit of something for everyone. Perhaps even in tiers or layers as described in my Nashville recap post from 2021. But how can we do that while still keeping the digital footprint for landing pages and end user sites as simple and intuitive as possible? I last explored this in my blog post called A New Model for Domains: DoOO & WPMS and shared how some schools like Coventry University and Oklahoma University are directing traffic and handling domain structures for landing pages and end user sites (which can feel like half the battle).
I love how some of our DoOO and WPMS schools are controlling growth on these platforms, as well as keeping things sustainable, by pushing all new signups to the WordPress Multisite by default. The WPMS then has a very limited set of plugins and themes that are easy to support and maintain for a large group of users. From there, if an end user wants to install a different theme, or explore a different application entirely, they’re directed to Domain of One’s Own. There’s more freedom here, but it likely involves a request form submission or a conversation with an admin before a cPanel account is granted. What’s ultimately happening now is that there are two paths for a user to take. And especially if we’re looking to add a third (Reclaim Cloud for next generation apps or sites that need more resources) it’s important for Reclaim to assist schools with correctly carving out these paths and creating very clear entry points.
This concept has come up in so many different conversations ranging from the visuals and metaphors we use to explain different topics, to how we’re articulating it in support scenarios, to how we’re providing more data for admins to make decisions, to how we’re pulling in these tools to help users choose the path that makes the most sense for them. We’ve been working on a few side projects to help with these scenarios, and now it feels like the right time to compile everything together.
When a new school comes to Reclaim to set up DoOO, WPMS, and the Cloud, I want them to have a cohesive menu of things that they can select or add to their setup to make it work to their preference. I’ve alluded to this with support articles like Domain of One’s Own Setup Features, which covers different signup workflows and cPanel customizations available for DoOO so a new admin can go through and decide what they’ll need. Even still, this article doesn’t quite capture everything that’s available in DoOO anymore, and it definitely doesn’t pull in WPMS & Reclaim Cloud. Where this “menu” lives or how it’s delivered is still a question mark (maybe as simple as adding in a few more guides) but for the purposes of this post I want to share a running list of some of the other projects we’ve been working on with the help of folks like Tom Woodward and Bryan Mathers to think more broadly about user choices, carving out paths, and connecting tools together.
While the landing page can be designed however admins prefer and even framed as a choice between WPMS and DoOO, you could still opt to push new signups to a default starting point. In that case, the above “landing page” would actually live on the WPMS directly, integrate with SSO, and be able to reflect what plugins/themes are in use like the demo above. An example domain might be sites.school.edu for the homepage and sites.school.edu/user for end-user sites.
If users decide they want more flexibility in cPanel, they would click a menu link that takes them to a homepage for DoOO like domains.school.edu. This space has its own SSO integration and signup workflow, so users can create or request accounts depending on admin preference.
^This dashboard was shared more thoroughly at the end of the last DoOO 201 workshop, and you can watch the final session called What’s Next for Domain of One’s Own for more info about how it works!
The admin landing page has worked well as a home base for new schools because it’s simple and to the point. But how is this WP install managed or updated long term? Do admins still find this space useful 2-3 years in? What if the landing page “quick links” were instead pulled into the WP dashboard, similar to Taylor’s Data Dashboard work or similarly to what the Ultimate Dashboard plugin does?
Similarly, I’d love to keep thinking about the future of end-user support docs. As mentioned above, this project gets complicated quickly because it becomes quite difficult for Reclaim to update each documentation site after they’ve been delivered to an institution. (Especially if the admin makes changes after the fact– we don’t want to overwrite those.) There’s a balance of ownership between what Reclaim can do to help and what admins choose to make available as a support resource, but I’m all for Reclaim providing starting templates where we can.
My latest thinking is that it may make sense for Reclaim to bring these templated guides into our main knowledge base under a new category of our Domain of One’s Own section. From there, new admins have two choices: they can point their users directly to those guides, which would have to be pretty generic to work for all/most setups, or admins could adopt articles for their own knowledge base sites. If and when Reclaim makes changes to one of our article templates, admins are notified by subscribing to the knowledge base section (already possible) and by hearing about it in our monthly newsletter.
I also think we’re not far off from really improving how we’re keeping different types of folks notified at Reclaim. In the early days we truly had 1 mailing list for the capital A “Administrator” of a project to get all notifications. Through the years we’ve been able to start separating out billing, support, SSO, and server maintenance notifications. We’ve also added the Roundup mailing list and Reclaim event notifications to the mix as well. It’s not a totally perfect system yet, but Pilot’s newest project setup questionnaire is a testament to how far we’ve come:
Pilot killed it with their work to improve how we’re collecting initial information from admins for new server/project setups. How we got by with a .PDF for so long, I’ll never know. :)
Two posts in two days! I’m trying to get in a better rhythm of writing more, and we’ll see if it lasts. Today I wanted to share one of the things I’m doing with the site for our upcoming conference, Reclaim Open, to pull in post metadata. This is by no means groundbreaking stuff, but it was kind of a cool workaround so I wanted to share. I know there are mixed opinions about Elementor, Gutenberg, and other site editors for WordPress, and honestly I’m still trying to work out how I feel about them myself. But in the meantime, I am using Elementor on reclaimopen.com, mostly because I’m familiar with it at this point and it was a fast way to get the look that I wanted for the site.
One of the things I’ve been working through over the last few days (and weeks leading up until now) has been collecting speaker information, building out a 3-day conference agenda, and now working to get it on the website. Displaying simultaneous tracks of conference sessions in an elegant way with quick time changes can quickly look messy and confusing, and then adding in presentation abstracts is a whole other thing entirely. Abstracts vary in length, include links & other resources, and need to be embedded in a way that doesn’t disrupt the larger schedule view. For previous conferences, I’ve added a toggle feature to expand session blocks if someone is interested in learning more about a particular talk, but it still doesn’t look the best on a desktop. For example, here’s a screenshot from the Domains19 Day One Schedule:
For the Reclaim Open schedule, I’ve decided instead to publish each abstract as a blog post that can be linked in session blocks, which will look something like this:
Having a dedicated blog post for each presentation also allows me to share a bit more information about the speaker, session focus, related links, etc. because space is no longer a factor. Lastly, proposal submissions were already sitting in blog post draft form because Gravity Forms is amazing.
Elementor allows you to create a theme template to be applied to all single posts. I designed one to look something like this:
Title at the top, session information (metadata) on the left, abstract (post content) on the right.
The metadata piece is why I’m writing this post– the focus and length of the session are being pulled in by categories and tags, respectively. Elementor doesn’t have a great way to filter categories/tags using the single post widgets, so I needed to come up with an alternate way to pull in speaker info. I didn’t want to create an individual user account in the WordPress dashboard for the post to recognize a different post “author” (i.e. session speaker), but I still wanted a way to pull that information in automatically and dynamically. Enter Custom Fields!
At the bottom of a single blog post, I added the Custom Field called Speaker:
Then at the bottom of each blog post, I added the speaker names in the Value field. Next, I went to configure items on the Single Post theme template with the following settings:
After saving those edits, I tested to make sure that data is changing based on my adjustments to tag & category selections, as well as whatever is listed as the Value for the custom Speaker field.
And (courtesy of hipsum.co) there you have it! Simple and effective. :)
I’m feeling extra grateful that I was able to attend and present at OER23 in person in Inverness, Scotland this year, and I can’t believe that the conference has already come and gone. This was my first in person event since OER19, and I had forgotten how inspiring it can be to meet with friendly faces on the ground for 2+ days and be challenged about the work that we encounter daily. I found that this trip for me was made up of so many special little moments, so rather than attempt to share one big Lesson, I’d rather just share the mini moments through photos and notes that I scribbled along the way.
Things I overheard during Bryan’s Workshop:
“When something is normalized it is no longer hybrid. Is it just that thing.”
OER Ecosystem – a collection from conversations & presentations at #OER23 (also referencing The Next Generation Digital Learning Environment: A Report on Research from my presentation with Jim further down):
What has still stuck with me during the GASTA presentations:
Really looking forward to Day 2 of @OERConf, doodles and all! Good morning, #oer23! pic.twitter.com/jvDru2kyOq
— Lauren Hanks (@brumface) April 6, 2023
Throwing paper airplanes during Dave Cormier‘s keynote, Learning in a time of abundance. (image credit: Tim Winterburn)
How do we find the right answers in a time of abundance?
Fascinating talk from @DrDeanW about the hydra system and immersive learning systems at #OER23. Paired really nicely with @jimgroom’s thinking around the complexities of Web3 pic.twitter.com/UvcE5i9mIc
— Lauren Hanks (@brumface) April 6, 2023
“Twitter is just brands talking to brands.”
After Jim’s presentation on Web 2.0 vs Web3, Anne-Marie Scott commented that Web3 exposes the responsibilities of community building online– it’s no longer just hanging out.
I’ll end this post to say that Jim and I were able to present on Reclaim’s version of the NGDLE, or cloud-based ecosystem of diverse, open source applications. This presentation was exciting for many reasons: it allowed us to think back to Reclaim’s first approach to offering a set of tools outside of the LMS (Domain of One’s Own), and now how we’re building on that with the possibilities of open source applications outside of the LAMP stack (Reclaim Cloud). We got to lean on some of Bryan Mathers’ original sketches to help explain the complexities of container-based web hosting through shipping containers, which still works as a perfect metaphor and visual. Finally, I really enjoyed the discussion on how Reclaim can be a home base for both individual/sandbox projects as well as enterprise level, mission critical multi-region setups.
While I have presented at other hybrid/virtual conferences and a handful of workshops and flex courses recently, it was nice to find a rhythm for talking to folks in person again– reading the room and feeding off the energy in the space. I’m even more stoked now for other events in the coming months like Reclaim Open and WPCampus 2023, as well as finding new and creative ways to talk about what’s cookin’ at Reclaim.
About once a year we try to get the Reclaim team together in person to work alongside each other, brainstorm for the future, and spend some time together in a new city. In years past we have visited Portland, New York and Nashville, not including the trips for other workshops, conferences, and events. Every time we get together in person I always come away feeling really refreshed and motivated to work with such an awesome group of individuals. In Portland we came up with the idea to host our first conference, Domains17, and in New York we started thinking quite seriously about Cloudron, which ultimately put us on a path towards Reclaim Cloud. I think after the New York trip we really began to understand the value of making time for the Reclaim team to hang out in person without any other responsibilities. We also went through a lot of transition and growth– our team expanded, we traveled more for other conferences and workshops, and then later hosted Domains19. By the time we were ready for another team trip, COVID was in full effect, and like most, we turned inwards to recalibrate and focus on perfecting our virtual events. We co-hosted OERxDomains21, an event that I still look back on with so much pride and excitement, and then a virtual DoOO workshop later that year (which I’m realizing I never formally blogged about). When we felt comfortable enough to be in person again, our team had more than doubled and the Nashville trip required a bit more planning to make the most of our time. Out of that trip came the foundations for Reclaim EdTech year 1, Reclaim Roundup, a tiered way of thinking about Domains, failover in Reclaim Cloud, and adjustments to internal team processes.
We used the goals set in Nashville as a cornerstone throughout 2022 to keep our work intentional and focused. Now with the year behind us, I’m so proud of all we were able to accomplish. We exceeded those goals and worked on setting healthy habits for learning & collaboration more so than ever before. Given our team has continued to grow and we were ready to start 2023 with a fresh plan, it was high time to meet again.
Though far from home, San Diego was a great city for a team trip. We stayed at the Moxy Hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter, ate a ton of great food, and had seemingly endless options for things to do in our free time. That Thursday night we grabbed a quick bite to eat at Prince Street Pizza after everyone made it into town and then prepped for a full day of working/brainstorming in person.
Like in Nashville, Friday in San Diego was definitely the highlight for me. We rented out this working space and it turned out to be a pretty great experience. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to just think with the team for a while, especially since our daily work can be rather busy. Also like Nashville, I kicked off the morning with some icebreakers to ease folks into conversation. I tend to roll my eyes at the idea of forced fun and usually steer away from anything too cheesy, but there’s definitely value in having a bit of structure first thing, warming up and learning a little bit more about each other, and then slowly transitioning into aligned ideas for the day. Here are the starter questions I used, in order:
The first 5 questions took our group about ~30 min to get through, and we spent the remainder of that hour tackling the last 2 questions. We wrote answers down on a whiteboard– a visual during trips that is becoming increasingly helpful for us. Even before jumping into all the various topics that could have been discussed, I wanted folks to remember the why we do what we do, and the who we do it for.
For question #6, we saw words like empathetic, trustworthy, collaborative, responsive, innovative, welcoming, and helpful. In coming up with this initial list, I thought it was interesting that words like speedy or fast didn’t come up, yet they’re extremely important to us. The team agreed that being timely was the natural result of acting with empathy and respect when working with customers, and the trip was already worth it for me at that point. This is something that I want to hold close and reinforce often for our team and anyone else that we hope to hire in the future.
One of the other things that became abundantly clear on this day, besides the sheer amount awesome work happening, is the fact that it’s not really possible for us to break out into strict teams for brainstorming. This is certainly a change from where we were in Nashville, and one that I think is indicative of the intentional habits we set last year to encourage collaboration around the work that we do. This doesn’t mean that internal Reclaim teams don’t exist, but each person has their foot in projects that impact some or all teams. To say, “ok Support, Infrastructure, Sales, and EdTech folks– split out and talk about what’s working/not working in your team,” is simply not possible, or at the very least, not helpful. For example, Infrastructure and EdTech folks are regularly assisting in Support, and Support is heavily mixed in with Infrastructure and Sales. EdTech and Sales work in close collaboration, and they both have a hand in the work that’s pushed to Infrastructure.
The cross-collaboration that’s happening at Reclaim gives everyone a voice for new ideas and handling challenges. This past January 2023 was also our largest month for internal professional development with at least 1-2 sessions scheduled each week. That kind of open, regular learning is something that we had dreamed about for our team only a few short years ago. Instilling healthy working practices (something I spent most of the summer thinking about) can take time to introduce, and even more time for habits to form. It has been so amazing to see this gradual transition over the last year, and even cooler to have that culminate on Friday.
One of the things I want to be mindful about as we kick off a new year is that we don’t let this collaboration work against us. For example, in order to make decisions or progress forward, does someone have to wait for approval from all teams? Ingrained collaboration means that no particular person or team is siloed or left to own work without the support of their peers. But we still want to make sure that someone is owning and pushing the work forward, and that things aren’t slowing down because of processes we’ve put in place. I suppose this is a symptom of growing pains more than anything, but I think being aware of those dangers will be important.
Last thing I’ll say about Friday– there was SO many things to chat about! A larger group = more work happening = more to discuss. There was definitely too much to cover for one single working day, which may be a sign that we need an extended trip in future years (two working days?) or that maybe there’s a need for more regular planning conversations like this throughout the year. We have also refreshed how we are handling meetings in 2023 – something for a future post – and perhaps that will play a role in what’s needed for next year’s trip. We shall see!
After some downtime at the hotel, we ended the evening with dinner & games at Punch Bowl Social. I don’t have many pictures from this evening, but it was fun to grab a bite to eat while we were waiting our turn for some bowling lanes to open up. After bowling, some folks even stayed around karaoke. I really recommend this space if you’re looking for a little something for everyone!
The next morning, we met for breakfast at Fig Tree Cafe (delicious by the way) and then headed to the San Diego Zoo! This was the biggest zoo that I’ve visited, and I’ll admit that I may have gotten a little too excited about the koalas and giraffes. :) I thought the layout of the zoo was really well thought out, and it allowed our team to leisurely walk through different exhibits & stop for food breaks along the way. I’ll spare you the shaky animal photos I took and instead share some photos that Tom captured:
About halfway through the day some people wanted to split and go check out the Comic-Con Museum while the rest continued on with the full zoo experience. I don’t think anyone planned on being at the zoo (or even in this part of San Diego) all day, but it worked out! There was great weather, a lot of walking around, and a lot of down time to hang out.
After making it back to the hotel for a little break, we met for dinner at La Puerta. I think this might’ve been my favorite meal of the whole weekend… the food and drinks were amazing.
From there we said goodbye to the early morning travelers and then walked over to a place called Throw It! for some good ole fashioned axe throwing. LOL. It also just so happened that there was a line of arcade games right when you walk in the door, so I have to think that everyone felt right at home!
Overall, I’m feeling really thankful that I was able to attend this trip, and equally thankful that I get to work with such a creative, impressive team. Looking forward to all the projects and ideas that came from this weekend, and already can’t wait for the next trip!
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