DMSC GovChal: The Long Now....

Greetings!

End of October and first of November digital sandbox summits yielded fantastic meetings with ETSU, UVa, UNC and NCState. UVa continues to widen umbrella of support to Foundation resources. Collaboration on development received 50 possible targets for support for prototype for DMSC GovChal 4.0 during spring of 2010. Sibley Johns of Music Resource Center in Charlottesville is working with us to set up the DMSC GovChal 4.0 Music Network Challenge. Exciting design creates collaboration between Nashville and Charlottesville as Phase I pilot. More later on all this stuff cuz it's rocking the Old Thought Coach (OTC).

Collaborations with The Maxine Smith Fellows program of the Tennessee Board of Regents promise huge opps for increasing quantity and quality of access and diversity in Tennessee and across the nation. We need such leadership and TBR's MSF brings that kind of capacity. GovChal hopes to add value to their capacity-building mission.

Mid-November brings us harvest outcomes. These outcomes, paradoxically, inspire us to reflect on enhancing preparations for spring. A digital sandbox is a seasonal thing too. As the sun never really sets (that phenomenon is only a matter of perspective), the light of the earth never leaves. Each of us a fully-orbed node in a network that fires up this old thought coach's already active imagination. Whether old water on the moon or new stars in the sky, heart-felt tears of gratitude open up the days and nights, weeks and months: It's just one long Now.

What's the next call at this point in the season? A strong finish here is prelude to a solid foundation for spring's national push. Intramural tournaments! Each DMSC GovChal affiliate conducts its own intramural tournament. Bring your best stuff and upload it wherever you can. then embed the link for the ballot on that site and ask people to register and evaluate your asset(s). Take their time. Give honest feedback (this is also a research exercise in game theory/motivational systems measures), and click submit.

Each producer/artist receives a digital spreadsheet with all data from assessment for each digital asset. Assessment data is engaged to determine what suggested revisions- if any-- would improve the asset's quality or value. The producer/artist then revises and publishes the media asset, clearly stating what ideas they received for revision and how the producer incorported them in the asset. Subsequent analytics reveal asset's value to community. Etc.

Longitunidal stuff in perpetual assessment space. The assets become avatars, artificial digital, binary identities that evolve and orbit the virtual commons. Space and time are data forever. The long now. (for more on this: Google: Stewart Brand, TED talk, The Long Now).

In this way, lack of knowledge transfer between semesters (between fall and spring, between spring and fall) is eliminated through "bridge" platform of the intramural challenge. A virtual commons for those 'tween' times when you want to know if what you've made is any good. when a long distance collaboration could just keep on shaking, baking and incubating. Outside (but inside) school, the old thought coach sees a lot of open field to play toward goal. Play the ball to space. Let the teammate run on to it. Play the value to space, let the market run on to it and play on goal. Guided system: Many scores; Much data. Quality analysis: quality processes and products. Epic systems for the old thought coach.

Kick off: 12.18 (deadline for uploads)

Judge Registration begins: 12.1

Do your own thing.

Till next time,

OTC (Old Thought Coach)

PS: We're doing it big-time at Tennessee State University's Engaged Technology Instiute (ETI) in Nashville TN. Contact: rbradley@tnstate.edu if interested.