First, as a reminder, this week’s Blursday social is Blursday…er…Thursday at 4 PM ET. guest will be Jeff Young, Senior Editor at EdSurge, whose Pandemic Campus Podcast Series is a must-listen. (Register here.) We’ll be getting a real on-the-ground read from Jeff in an increasingly fluid and social environment provided by the rapidly evolving Run the World platform. (More on that in a bit.)
Next Blursday, 10/22, we’ll be talking with Doug Lederman, co-founder and editor at Inside Higher Ed. Doug is one of the people I most like to talk to when I want to find out what’s about to happen, or what’s happening that nobody is seeing yet. As both a great reporter and a great editor, he really has his ear to the ground. And in the times like the ones we’re living through now, where the waves of change come fast and furious, it’s important to have that sixth sense.
I’m really quite pleased with the kind of Blursday Social experiences that Run the World is able to support as it matures and adds features (and as I get better at using it). I’m increasingly able to create that fluid, social experience that we all miss and are craving.
We’ll kick off the conversations with a fifteen-minute(ish) conversation. In Doug’s case, he’s going to offer up a few trends he’s seeing that are potential discussion starters. The group will pick the one that most people want to talk about. We’ll then have a volunteer attendees join us in an impromptu conversation. I suppose you could call it a “panel,” but it really feels more like a more natural, organic conversation.
Starting this week with Jeff, and continuing on with Doug, we’re going to use a new feature that let’s us do one-on-one speed dating breakout groups on-the-fly. Once we have a nice, meaty conversation going, we’ll break off into a few rounds of one-on-one discussions and then reconvene for more conversation. It’s astonishingly easy and pretty natural (although you do have to get used to the hard cutoff for the speed dating sessions). So we’ll talk about a topic together, break out to have some one-on-one conversations, and then convene another volunteer group to come “up front” and talk some more about it.
Once it feels like the group has had enough group conversation, we’ll break out again into one-on-one conversations for purely social discussions. The joint closes at 5:30 PM ET, but leave when you want.
Dress code is COVID casual. BYOB. Bring friends; there’s plenty of room, and the social distancing safeguards are top notch.
Again, Doug’s session is next Blursday, 10/22, from 4 PM to 5:30 PM ET. Register here.
