#MYFest22 Challenging Conference Exclusions

I came across a post by Ann Gagne entitled “Pedagogy of Complicity” where she critiques f2f conferences especially and says “The lack of reflection within conference educational spaces right now is really upsetting. No one is really asking who is missing from those spaces, because if they did, the spaces would not look like the conference spaces we are given to engage in.” and she invites us to “think about how deeply complicit you are in these conference systems and academic associations (in particular academic association leadership structures) and what is one thing you can do to stop upholding the systems that exclude so many people.”

Now I would never ever claim to have completely subverted but I would claim that Virtually Connecting has been challenging academic gatekeeping at conferences and re-centering the voices of those who are often absent at conferences – so like global South scholars, mothers of young children, early career and contingent academics and graduate students, academics with disabilities – those who can rarely afford to travel (financially, socially, otherwise!). It started about “giving access” and turned into “subverting the dominant discourses” because this is what happens when you DESIGN FROM THE MARGINS. When you design from the margins, you see things differently, and those at the margins, as central designers of a space, create spaces that are completely different. And that’s what Virtually Connecting has been.

This year, with MYFest (see https://myfest.equityunbound.org) we challenged what an online learning experience can be, after two years of (mostly, but not exclusively) horrible online conferences, where you either joined one or two sessions because… who can take 3 full days off of work and family every few weeks??? Or you exhausted yourself for 3 days because you paid for it? Who can focus on presentation after presentation without any social interaction, or 10 mins of socialization in the midst of hours of listening? I can’t! I can’t do it online or in person honestly.

MYFest challenges all of that in so many different ways, and arose out of a group of us just feeling like we need a nourishing and reenergizing space right now – knowing that others would need the same. It’s different because:

1. Wellbeing and social justice are central to our ethos and our praxis (Intentionally Equitable Hospitality) – I would never say we are perfect in representation or offerings – but we’re trying and we can always improve.
2. There is absolutely no reason for an online learning experience to be crowded into 3 days. People are not traveling. Why not spread it out over three months, with something like one or two sessions a day? That’s how MYFest is. No obligation to attend all sessions, but even if you did, it would be 2 or 3 hours of your day, tops.
3. Why do we need to have overlapping sessions and have people go crazy trying to choose between them? With MYFest, NO sessions overlap – it is a no FOMO zone! And, if you miss one, some are recorded and some you can ask for “encore” in August!
4. Choose your own learning journey. Sure, in a conference you can choose which sessions to go to, but with MYFest, you can plan to attend several things within a particular track, but you don’t give up on other tracks when you choose one track. There is no situation where all the decolonial sessions are at the same time and one the last day. Everything is spread throughout the event.
5. Synchronous and asynchronous both going wild – in things like connectivist MOOCs in the past, there would be MOSTLY async stuff and occasional sync stuff; in a lot of pandemic stuff, sync was the main thing. With MYFest, there is frequent-enough sync stuff (like I said, one or two a day, usually) and still lots going on asynchronously on Slack and several padlets
6. We designed it as pay-what-you-can. We have a grant to pay our facilitators/guests – and for participants, if they can afford it, we think we’ve asked a reasonable price. Need 50% off? It’s right there on the Eventbrite, use the code right away. Cannot afford 50%? Sure! We can give a 100% discount. Just email us. We recognize some people have funding and some don’t. Some people have other financial priorities and we would never exclude someone because of that.
7. We are trying to fill gaps and make sure we do as much as we can with accessibility. I know we are not 100% there, we’re iterating. Tomorrow we have an Accessibility Crowdsourcing session and next week a Syllabus Accessibility Jam (bring your syllabus and get feedback!)

It was a lot of hard work to prepare MYFest and now it’s starting to bear fruit and bring us all so much joy. It’s been wonderful working with some old/close friends and some new friends to make this happen: Mia Zamora, Rissa Sorensen-Unruh, Nate Angell, Remi Kalir, Alan Levine, Rebecca J. Hogue, Sukaina Walji, Laura Gibbs, Heather Wrightly, Felecia Caton-Garcia, George Station, Anne-Marie Scott and Brenna Clark-Gray – you’ll see us in and out of this three-month experience as well as a host of guest facilitators and spaces for participants to contribute their own things like “curated keynotes” and “open sessions”. Check out all the June offerings and the Ongoing ones

Interested? Register here: https://bit.ly/myfest22register

What else am I missing?

Featured Image Strawberries coming out by Erik Karits from Pixabay