Webhead Fiesta: Webheads in Texas' Virtual Feast

On March 30th, I a will be hosting a "Welcome to Texas, Webheads" Virtual Feast at the Houston Street Bistro in San Antonio, Texas. The feast will begin at 6:00 PM (1200 GMT - I think I am writing this right, we are at GMT-6 here in Texas) and last as long as folks want to stay. I have arranged for three distinct Wifi connections to the internet and there are three guests who have offered to bring laptops and webcams to participate in this Webhead event. At last count, Buth, Vance, Christine, Jane, Elizabeth (and hubby?), Maria (and hubby?), Anna, and myself will be present. I am also hoping that Jim Duber and Rae Roberts, can stop by (they will be in San Antonio, but had prior commitments - I will at least try to get photo and audio blog from them). That is 10 wehbeads at one face to face meeting - am I breaking a record here?

Now, I realize that many of you will not be able to attend the TESOL event in San Antonio, but through the magic of the internet, you can still participate in the Virtual Feast. Here are some ways you can get involved in this event:

I will be videotaping interviews with the live Webhead guests who attend the Virtual Feast, which will be made available via streaming video at a later date. So if you have any burning questions for me to ask all these guests, let me know so I can make note of it. If you can access a video cam, you can also video record your response to the Virtual Feast event and send the video file to me, which I will in turn, edit into the final version which I will then make available to all Webheads via the net. If all else fails, send me an audio file of your response. Clearly identify yourself and tell the viewer your thoughts about the event. (There will also be audio blogging and you can post your audios in both places - let me know if you need any help to do this?) - [email protected]

Be online when the event occurs and communicate with us via the web. As I said, there should be three ways to communicate with the live group. I will give more details later on which areas we will be using (Probably Yahoo, TappedIn/Alado, and LearningTimes).

Since this group is so comfortable with innovation and collaboration, I though it would be helpful to let the group make suggestions in advance of things that you would like to see us try. Should we just open a Yahoo window for questions and comments, or would you like to see us in Learning Times, or would you like a presentation on San Antonio, the city or how it relates to Texas history, or maybe a run-down on the TESOL convention itself? Just what would you like to see? I am going to suggest that whatever we finally decide on, that we do it in such a way as to record it in some format, so those of you whose clocks don't match my waking hours, can get up the next day and see a recorded version of what happened.

I will also have my digital camera available well as my cell phone camera for photo blogging and will also be providing webspace for audio blogging from those present on a publicly accessible blog. I will give you all the Blog URL location later. I will be encouraging live attendees to post to this blog as well. I will have flickr and buzznet numbers available for direct posting or participants can email their photos and comments directly to me and I will see that they get posted.

The Houston Street Bistro is near the hotel where the TESOL convention is being held and they serve reasonably priced food for those that can actually eat with us.

I am sure I have left out some details, so let me know what else I could do to make this a real FUN virtual experience as well as great opportunity for several of us to meet F2F.I look forward to everyone's comments.

Feel free to post this on to whatever relevant lists you like.

elderbob

Comments

Wow, this is fantastic, Elderbob—quite ambitious indeed, but with luck it’ll work out the way you have planned it; very good planning, indeed!!!! Since I will be bringing my laptop, mic, and web cam, too, to help out with videoconferencing for non-attending CALL Interest Section members in the Electronic Village (the physical place) at TESOL, I can also help out at the meet-up in the Bistro.

I’m really looking forward to this, Elderbob, and thank you for getting the cats to run in one direction!

Christine Bauer-Ramazani

Posted by: Christine Bauer-Ramazani | March 18, 2005 at 01:12 PM