Recognition for #eurocallgathering participation.

 

Many of us at EuroCALL breathed a huge sigh of relief as we reached the end of the #euorcallgathering event last week. Not just because this was soon followed by a Zoom outage around the world shortly afterwards, but also because this was a new endeavour for us and we had no way of knowing how it would go. 

We are grateful to all of you for the fact that it went so well.

I am delighted to say that all went pretty much to plan and we all enjoyed fellowship - albeit virtual fellowship - with our community. Consequently our batteries were recharged by all the fabulous interactions we enjoyed. If you haven't yet had a chance to investigate the event, take a good look around our #eurocallgathering site. 

To those who contributed to this event, providing recorded presentations of their accepted papers, organising symposia and workshops online we want to acknowledge that work through digital badges. 

We do have a precedent for this, as those who came to Louvain La Neuve will remember. Badges will be issued to the email addresses of those who had accepted presentations, posters etc. We advise you to add these to your own Open Badge Passport account (it is free) and follow this tutorial in order to share your badge on your online accounts. If you would like to print off a paper certificate, follow the instructions here. 

Those of you who participated in the #eurocallgathering can also expect a badge to come your way. If you registered on the site we will issue your badge directly. However, if you engaged with the event and didn't register we are also providing a route for you to claim a Participant badge by providing some evidence of your engagement. 

These badges are issued through email and unfortunately they may be filtered by your email service so please check your spam/junk folders in the coming days to ensure that your contribution to #eurocallgathering is recognised by these portable, digital micro-credentials. 

We will be looking out for signs of these badges around the world. 

Thank you for playing an active role in our EuroCALL community. 

#eurocallgathering kicks off

 

Prior to the Graham Davies keynote (see recording above) this morning Mirjam welcomed us all with these words:

Good morning, good day, good evening, and welcome everybody wherever you are in the world! 

The saying “Life is what’s happening while you are busy making other plans” which is attributed to John Lennon – although he was not the one who coined it – probably captures best what has happened to all of us in 2020 so far. 

We, the EUROCALL community were not spared the impact of Covid-19, and while the  Copenhagen team – Karen-Margrete, Sane and Patrick - were getting ready to host us on their campus and in their city, it became increasingly clear that an on-site event was not an option this year. 

Life took over in the shape of a pandemic and I know that this has brought hardship to some of you. An especially warm welcome to you to the Gathering of our – of your - CALL community. 

What has moved me most over the past weeks and months is the spirit and enthusiasm with which everybody has risen to the challenge (against all odds!), my colleagues on the executive committee, first and foremost. 

The solution for Plan B was clear: we’d be using technology for what it should be used: to bring us together, to first prepare and now share what we feel passionate about, that is our work as CALL scholars. 

I would like to say, “Thank you!” to Teresa, Kate, and Toni in particular who have picked up the baton from the Copenhagen team and have created – with your input – this event. 

It is with immense gratitude to all of you that I declare the EUROCALL Gathering 2020 open. 

 

Before I hand over to my colleagues, I would like to invite you all to tomorrow evening’s social. Bring a glass of your favourite drink and a song, poem, tongue twister, any object with an associated story in any language or anything else that lends itself to online entertainment of a language-related nature. 

and so it began...

and we ask you tell us of your experiences of the #eurocallgathering event using flipgrid, a video sharing platform. To contribute you will need to sign on with either a microsoft or a google mail account. 

The topic is here or you can scan this QR code:

Launching the #eurocallgathering and widening participation.

 

We are nearing lift off! 

The theme for this year's Eurocall conference and of course the Gathering is 

CALL for widening participation

Sadly, the pandemic prevents us from having a face to face event on this theme but it also presented us with an opportunity to reach further than we have been able to in the past by connecting and running our Gathering online. An opportunity to have more open conversations relevant to our discipline, to connect to those who perhaps would not otherwise be able to participate in those discussions. We hope that you will encourage your colleagues and students to join us, to watch the peer reviewed conference papers, take part in the workshops and symposia, view submitted posters. 

The EuroCALL Gathering website will be our hub for the event which opens on the 20th August. The live event details can be read before you register for the ones you wish to join. We will then email you with access details. 

The recordings of presentations which would have been given in Copenhagen are hosted on our You Tube channel going live on August 18th to give you time to find your way around.

A soundtrack to the Gathering. 

Thanks to @ohashilou for this wonderful suggestion:

A silent disco maybe? Headphones ready!! #eurocallgathering is all about community @EurocallLang

— Teresa MacKinnon (@WarwickLanguage) August 9, 2020

To contribute your choice of track to our playlist you can either:

Follow this link to become a You Tube collaborator and add the track directly to our channel

or

Tweet your choice of You Tube track using the #eurocallgathering and we will add it on your behalf. 

Noticeboard.

Of course every physical conference has a noticeboard - a place where you can leave notes for each other, offer lifts home or ask for help finding a lost mobile phone. A virtual conference also needs such a facility. you can post directly to this jamboard 

#eurocallgathering Connecting in cyberspace.

August is here!

The countdown to our Gathering event is underway. Click on the rocket here to see it. 

Thanks to all those who have provided their presentations and those who are contributing posters to our padlet boards. We are so delighted to see all the hard work coming together. It is of course great to have content but now we really need to start to connect with our community ready for the launch of the Gathering. 

If we had been able to meet face to face in Copenhagen then we would have been busy planning our journey, choosing our hotel, arranging our social events...here's how we are hoping to recreate the community spirit of such activities in cyberspace. 

Our community map. 

We are asking Gathering participants to add themselves to our community map by filling in this short form.  You can put in as much or as little detail as you like and we will create a pin on our map which is then visible to others in the community. 

Why not get creative and include a photo or an avatar to represent yourself? You never know, you may discover others near you who are also part of our community and you had never met. 

Our #eurocallgathering hashtag

As you will have seen mentioned in the video shared above, we are using this hashtag to bring together what you share about the Gathering event. It would be lovely to start this will some of your Eurocall memories. Do you have favourite moments from conferences gone by? Photos of the places you have travelled to to be with us? If so share them on Instagram or Twitter using the #eurocallgathering hashtag and we will add them to our wakelet on the Gathering site for all to enjoy. During the event we will continue to look out for your social sharing to celebrate shared history and help us all make new connections. 

Be a Eurocall champion!

The covid19 crisis has impacted enormously on us all. As an organisation we can only continue with your help. Please join us on social media and within your networks to encourage membership at our reduced 65 Euro rate this year. Conference income is vital to our survival and we are working hard to make sure that we can weather this storm. Your participation is vital to this effort, we know you will help us find the silver lining in very dark clouds.