Future Class is Going to Drumbeat!

How’d this Happen?

I am almost positive that when the six members of Future Class signed up that none of us knew that Barcelona was going to be a part of the class agenda (we didn’t have a syllabus, bur rather a series of agendas).  

A Poetic Transcription Reformatted by WordPress

The class started with Cathy saying:

I want to find ways we can make your projects come true this semester

and make your dreams come true.

But I don’t know what any of us were dreaming of Drumbeat and Barcelona, until she followed that with this Other Poetic Transcription Reformatted by WordPress:

The Drumbeat Festival
We’re all inventing it
It’s kind of like burning man / or maker fair or
they’re calling [it] a folk festival,

We’re going to have something planned
by the time we get there
in fact a lot planned

but you don’t go to it like a normal conference

you wander around

you go from place to place

and you actually sit down and build things with people

and they want your input about what to do and how to do it
your actual input!

our thread is called Storming the Academy
and it’s all about how to take the principals
of
the open web

and collaboration

and use them to help transform higher education.

In the end, 5 of us trekked halfway across the globe to see what this Drumbeat thing was about as we “Stormed the Academy”.

Drumbeat for me as a Member of Future Class etc.

Going to Barcelona was probably the last thing I was thinking about. I’d not been in Europe for some years and hadn’t really thought about going back for anything other than dissertation research (two years away). Cathy made Drumbeat sound like nothing I’d experienced before. When it became clear that I’d be able to receive some funding to go I jumped at the opportunity.

It was a pivotal experience beyond giving me the information you are finding on this site. Being able to speak with the people who were attending caused me to critically question how I approach my research. It also made me think about how I can incorporate more openness in to my pedagogy when I start teaching regularly next fall.  Based on conversations I had with members of the class while I was there and since returning I am sure I’m not the only one who had what might be called a “life changing experience” at Drumbeat.