Attending Computers and Writing (Part 1)

I’ve finished the second day of the 2008 Computers and Writing Conference in Athens, GA. Yesterday I had a good time at the “Get your Twitter out of my Ajax” Web 2.0 & Writing workshop. We developed a wiki to share material, and hope that we all will continue to add to it. I had a blast talking with my colleagues about blogs, micro-blogs, and social bookmarking (actually we got side-tracked into talking about tagging, taxonomies, and folksonomies). I then went to the second half of the Graduate Research Network (GRN) Forum and chatted it up with some graduate students about teaching at community colleges and other teaching focused institutions.  We then concluded with an opening reception at Tasty World hosted by Bedford/St. Martins. Today I live blogged the opening Town Hall and three panels throughout the day. I got caught up with some colleagues and then went to the awards reception.
While I’ve been having a great time live blogging, uttering, bookmarking, and tweeting, I’ve had evening more fun talking about these “new” technologies (ie, new to me in the last year or so and sharing them with my colleagues). I’ve realized that although I am now looking elsewhere to learn about “new” technologies (Lifehacker, Webware, NMC, sxsw interactive, and my CyberSalon peeps); I still very much want and need the dialogue and scholarship of the computers and writing community. All of the panels today where either heavy theoretical pieces, or made sure to theorize the work they are doing.
Yes, I admit it, working at the community college sometimes buries me in the practice, or I like to hope praxis, of the day-to-day. Being at Computers and Writing has reminded me why I love being in rhetoric and composition, the scholarly emphasis on both:
process and product,
teaching and scholarship, and
theory and practice.
So yeah, at the end of the day I’m realizing I need to get myself reading some more, writing some more, and theorize a bit more as well.  Maybe I’ll try to theorize a bit about the hybrid active conference participation I’ve been doing here at C&W (and like some of my other friends do at other conferences...thus a part 2!).

May 23 2008 | Posted in C&W