Next week I’m headed to the The Digital Learning Research Network (dLRN) conference at Stanford.  The theme of the conference is Making Sense of Higher Education: Networks and Change. From the website:

This conference will be of interest to researchers, academics, and practitioners who are exploring the many nuances of the complex and uncertain landscape of higher education in a digital age.

Well, yes that is of interest to me! Given my new role at MSU, I will be engaged in, and will have my ear closely tuned to, the Innovation and Work strand.  I was first drawn to the conference through a series of tweets and links, which, started with this reflective blog post by George Siemens. Several tweets and article reads later, I registered for the conference.

The fantastic Virtually Connecting group is deeply committed to helping connect people who cannot attend academic conferences to these experiences and they will be embedded in dLRN15. I am excited to volunteer to assist in their efforts not only by tweeting, but by shadowing an on-site buddy for one of the sessions. You can find out more about how to Virtually Connect (in ways beyond twitter) to dLRN15 here:

http://virtuallyconnecting.org/announcements/we-are-vconnecting-at-dlrn15-prelim-schedule/

This blog post is a specific call to my network of colleagues who will not be in attendance – looking at the schedule, what sessions interest you? What sessions are you particularly interested in and how can I help curate and gather information and connections for you to bring back to MSU to continue our contextual conversations on these issues?

I’m beyond excited to be connecting with friends from my networks around the world who are also attending dLRN. In addition to the conference, I’ll be making a few special stops to see some MAET students and alums in action in the Bay Area and at Stanford, because Spartans Will!

Finally, I have never been to Silicon Valley, so, if you have any (culinary) tips (in particular) send them my way.