I’ve been lucky to receive some very sweet endorsements from some great PBR classmates like Hugh McElveen, Molly Ross, Christa Forster and Misha Penton.
Walled Garden?
I hope I at least half deserve their kind words. The only catch is, as Christa can tell you, NovoEd is a Walled Garden. Cyberspace is filled with walled gardens. Some of the walls are like concrete bunkers; some are like semi-permeable membranes. I suppose the classic Walled Garden was AOL which, for a time, was able to convince users that they were safer and happier in the simplicity of everything good, curated for you by AOL, and not in venturing out to the messiness of the untamed Web.
People who aren’t NovoEd members can’t see much. But even if you sign up, NovoEd won’t let you sign up for PBR anymore, which means even “members” can’t see the work we did or the compliments we paid each other. NovoEd is a great platform which has served us well, so calling it a “Cultural Dead End” might be harsh, but it is a fairly walled garden. It’s far from the idealism of the Open Web.
Fly Free on The [Open] Web!
Therefore I’d like to encourage us all to connect to each other and “Endorse” each other on LinkedIn. In fact LinkedIn is a walled garden too. But it’s walls are quite a bit more porous than NovoEd’s.
Ultimately I’m convinced that we artist-scholars are best served by blogging about our practice on an open platform like WordPress, reading the blogs of other artists we find compelling, and creating conversation and community by leaving comments there. In the next couple days I’ll post 2 parts on this:
• Blogging Your Practice – Part I – Writing
• Blogging Your Practgice – Part II – Reading
But before all that I’d like to encourage us all to connect on the fairly open platform of LinkedIn. They have a couple different ways for us to “Endorse” each other and that content can be seen by a lot more people than the small world of a single MOOC. As you see in this image, you can click off “Skills & Expertise” or you can “Write a Recommendation.” Let’s all connect to each other on LinkedIn and do a bit of endorsing there.
You’ll find me at:
http://nl.linkedin.com/in/vaneeesa
LMK where to find you in the comments below!
Featured Image: “My Endorsement is no Secret” by Erica Minton
