AgriMOOC Exploratory Conversation Notes
call (949) 202-4265, use Pin 93412#
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
1pm PST, 4pm EST, 5pm Atlantic
Recording can be found here: http://fullcircle.enterthemeeting.com/e/mtg?1II9HP

1.Introductions: 

• Introductions: 
  • Barbara Ganley from Vermont: passionate about sustainable agriculture questions, walks line between large gardener and small farmer.  And interested in MOOCs--have participated but new to facilitating them.  GIANT ANTS!!!!
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  • Julia from Chicago; IL state lead for Farm to School National Network. U. IL Extension. Worked w/ Pamela Martin. Do GIS foodshed mapping at U. of Chicago.
  • Josien Kapma, Dutch living in  Portuga: starting a similar project in Europe where  many are  thinking about sustainable ag. Fascinated by social media opportunities. So both ag and media perspective - new ways of learning. Also a dairy farmer. 200 cows -- big for Europe.
  • Joanna from California: new coordinator of INFAS at UC Davis. Kellogg Fnd funded inter-institution network for food and agriculture sustainability. 
  • Nancy White from Seattle: front yard gardener with three chickens.  Much of her work is involved in international ag research--as facilitator.  This topic is particularly relevant to her work.  
  • John O Sullivan from NC: director at center for environmental farming system, part of INFAS. 
  • John McQueen from Oregon: coordinator for eOrganic, located in Corvallis, Oregon at Oregon State University, http://eorganic.info  CoP with Extension. Land grant universities, extension folk, NPOs, practitioners. Network and write articles for the web about certified organic agriculture. Background in soil science. Do tech and soc media for eOrganic.
  • Michelle Wander: 
    
    

Context and What is a MOOC?

• Why we are convening this call: we notice there are lots of conversations, but not always bridged, not always in the open. We're interested in seeing how the vehicle of a MOOC convenes conversations that are more than one-off or within closed groups. We're eager to explore the interplay of synchronous and asynchronous events and conversations and their ripple effects to wider groups/diverse people who might join us to sort the question about what do we mean by the future of food and its effect on all of us - working, living.  Today we're in the first stage of brainstorming topics, platforms, shape-- shape will depend on the topic and the participants.  
  
  
• What is MOOCness:  It can be anything we want it to be. MOOCS are typically over a stated perid of time, engaging people around a theme or topic, mashing up guest lectures, teams presenting ideas, bringing together various social media.  The defining characterisitic is that they are open.  Anyone who wants to join can join.  There will be a core of people participating, and a group along the edges watching and listening.  The rippling out is there and will move out in quiet and not so quiet ways.  The theme that excites us--multiple perspectives on sustainable ag. Academic MOOCs can be quite shaped and structured. It's up to the people putting energy into it to decide on how much shape it needs.
  
  
• From tech perspective--we have a hub--anywhere we choose.  We also do things, such as tagging, to help us to leave digital traces, to aggregate our info and conversations when they take place outside of that central meeting space.  Exciting and challenging.  Think  about  students cross-pollinating their learning with practitioners in open places: a MOOC provides an opportunity to do things that we cannot do in traditional academic settings.
  
  

   
John O'Sullivan:  It seems important to let people know that it's taking place.  How do we alert folks--the town crier process?  How do communities learn about it?

Nancy:  Once we decide on our convening question, we'll be able to get the word out through our extensive networks.  To be successful, we all need to send out the word.

Q: Are MOOCS real-time?  Are they always online? Asynchronous?
NW: They can be anything.  A mix of real-time; everything will be recorded. Mix of modalities is good, too. Synchronous tends to help us pay attention, be together, asynchronous gives us flexibility. 

Q: How is a MOOC different from a CoP?
NW:   MOOC vs CoP - CoP is a group of self identified people who care about something and learn together over time. The MOOC has a finite period of time, defined but loose/flexible structure (i.e. not everyone has to do everything nor do they have to do it the same).

2. Discussion: Starting our Conversations
Comment: Tom T's interest in bringing together the largest possible group of interested parties. Also interested in using what we learn to use in the evaluation of food systems in US. If  we tap into the diversity, it can go many ways simultaneously.

Q: Huge topic. What would we focus on? Goal or purpose? There are lots of sustainability assessment movements out there with lots of different activities.

 We could start with a particular perspective: e.g. Barbara's former student doing an Ethnography of Soil working w/ Campesinos in Columbia. A fresh perspective on what do we mean by sustainability? She agreed to participate later in the spring and talk about her work. 

• John O: INFAS National Food Assessment - national, local building blocks, what to do at national level? connecting internationally? Want to make sure there is a diversity of voices in the conversation - not just one discipline or model as a process.
• Julia: What is sustainability? Who's responsible for feeding whom? We are often told in the US to do something because we have to feed the world. At whose expense of growing locally. 
• John O:  Or a false conciousness -- many people are feeding themselves. Underground economy and the formal economy model, but most is measured by the last. More complex model. 
• Julia: the argument for current food production system is the "feed the world" argument but are we really. Tell the whole story. 
• JO: heading towards a system controlled by a relatively few and few in the world could participate in.
• Michelle: The challenge of this conversation is to get people w/ different perspectives. Would be a great thing to try and figure out. A great amount of scholarship and knowledge about food access and distribution that has been forgotten/ignored in Green Rev. Recent conference -- very lopsided by thesis of Gates Foundation. Poorly informed. Get people to come into conversation with an open mind.
• What kind of question would attract people into that conversation: how to address hunger long term, globally... framed so everyone does not feel threatened. 
• Barbara: could we start with something smaller to try out the vehicle - tools, processes to engage people. 
  • Smaller piece --- i.e. the technology question - big hope, favoriate BMGF hypothesis, communications tech empowering the poor. Presentation last week - DigitalGreen. Consistent with this experiment in terms of media. Tensions over technology, control of technology. What is the potential for increased information flow to increase well being of lives and XYZ. 
  • Golden Rice question. Genetically engineered rice - some see as success, some not because of GM aspect. That would move a conversation right into strong perspectives. 
  • Tech might be less polarizing than GM. Where people are excited about the media.
  • In Europe looking for less polarizing so chose food democracy. Diversity in stores and supermarkets. Strong theme which people like. Looking for non polarizing partners and found them in Slow Food movement - the young people, not the official version. Consumers are eager to meet farmers. So young farmers of Europe, well organized by country. 50th anniversary of common policy. Old farmers and young foodies. Just picking up. 
  • AgChat - have been really successful in converging different people.  http://agchat.org/?? http://agchat.org/
  • #agchat https://twitter.com/#!/agchat - successful at giving people voice, relatively superficial on Twitter, but source of themes/inspiration. 
  • J: In farm to school --Recently talked to young leaders, 3-4th gen, 18-30 farming conventional commodity crops. Now they have small children. How will they have food access? We want this at our schools. What can we do? But changing what they grow is more challenging -- it is a business. Have to make a living. The interest of growing a row or two for farm-to-school. Talking about our children, getting them local and healthy food and where it is going to come from - non confrontational question. Ex FSA, 4H kids, still involved and interested in service programs. Volunteering to get food for food pantries, but they weren't growing it. Now making a connection to Feeding Illinois. One row for these efforts. 
  • Language - all in English or can we bring in other languages?  het kan ook in het nederlands, ou em português
    • Nancy works with Google translator, but what's important is to get people talking and work with folks to bridge languages. Should we as an experiment convene several conversations and see what happens?
      
      

Possible Topics for Experiments:

• Farm to School
• Tech
• Kristina's ethnography of soil and outside the formal economy
• Young farmer dialog/AgChat -- the box of "tomorrow"
  
  

Next Steps
NW: If we were to do a set of experiments, there are a couple of things we'd need:
Do we have enough interest to have groups work on different topics?  To do these experiments? If this is an opportunity  for us to push our networks to engage with these conversations, to develop a topic around our work.  If we created an umbrella to take care of home base, technology, toolset, would there be interest in raising the questions for the experiment, and might it cross-pollinate the groups & questions.
INFAS--reaching out to them is a real opportunity.  The access to students will generate great energy.  Students are an attractor!  Sustainable Ag Education Network--we should go after it here and internationally. (US, Europe, Asia, IAALD)

We need partners--you-- with the burning questions. (Barbara and Nancy  willing to facilitate, help wrangle technology)

What questions, what exactly do you mean?  We mean the topics--technology, young farmers, etc--if you can frame the questions and propose some ways to look at those themes, we'll help.  Example:  Set themes for a call once a month.  The convener posts a video/reading/slides/whatever, and we get together and discuss those questions in the real-time event and then beyond, on our own spaces.  The question has to be specific enough to grasp, to relate to someone's work right now. A burning question grabs the attention--makes it worthwhile to engage with us online.  Communities of engagement may emerge around those questions.

We need:  A real problem. A deadline. Time focus. A proposal. Vs theoretical or really open. Topics don't have to have the same shape as one another. Indeed, let's make sure the first three aren't too similar and constrain creativity. How about  trying out  a question one of you is trying to answer and engage a group to think about that. And then conversations can grow out in several different directions.

Closing:  Go around and gauge our interest and commitment. 

• John O - this is a good idea to do an experiment. INFAS gathering in May, do something before that. Check w/ Tom and INFAS group to see what degree they could support w/ infrastructure. One of the ideas worth following up or a grad person w/ a burning idea (I.e. Kristina).
• Michelle - agree w/ John. If we have a place on the blog to cultivate asynchronously ideas, pretty sure we'll have lots of follow up ideas. Then to decide which first. Ping pong between brainstorming on blog vs scheduled discussions. Energy and timing of individuals will push it. Can imagine questions to pitch organically. 
• Action item: post this recording and note and ask folks: What's your burning question?
• Julia: yes, interested in participating. Still wrapping head around concept. Want to be involved. 
• Josien: Open, wondering if just want to learn and copy what I like for Europe or join in this one. What would be interesting is to do a meeting like this with farmers from all over the world. (the feed the world conversation is also happening in Europe.) So something global. 
• Barbara: Excited about possibility of experiments/conversations. Concerned... N & B can't be responsible for everything on the blog, so would love to have y'all join, do some posting. If something resonates that you'd like to add. More menu items, tabs, topics, themes. OUR blog. So please tinker. We can give you admin access. People are looking at the blog, but we need to start having the conversations on there as we move towards first big converations. It is easy. Nancy or Barbara can assist.
• Nancy  wants to be a supporter.  It has to spring off the energy of all of us.  That's an offer on the table.  Wants to be a supporter and a follower.  Will post recording and notes on the blog. Everyone comment, leave a reflection--send out the link to people we think would be interested. Useful for folks to communicate with their networks. Feels encouraged.
  
  

To the blog, to the blog!

• What conversations about sustainable agriculture are happening now?  
• Where and how are they happening? 
• How might we imagine they could be enhanced with a MOOC approach? Would a different structure give people (who) greater access to the conversation. Is this offer of a structure useful to the wider network of people interested in sustainable ag. A way to "follow" the topic. To engage in the topic/.
  
  
• Who is we?
  • is this a viable option for folks like farmers? What kind of farmers -- diversifying field! (farmerpunk)
  • academic
  • the continuum across practitioners (big ag, long time family ag, new farmer ag)
  • will people want to engage?
• How do we want to do it? (i.e MOOC?)
• Next steps?  Where? https://agrimooc.wordpress.com/ Facebook? Google Group?
  • distinguish between MOOCing, and planning?
  • Talk to Kevin Gamble <kjgamble@extension.org>
    
    

Examples
http://www.farmplate.com/
http://www.hardwickagriculture.org/index.html 
http://agchat.org/ 

Text from Webpage
Everywhere we turn someone is talking about agriculture, sustainability, food, the future of farming… so many juicy conversations. We are interested in paying attention to those conversations and convening the ones that cry out to happen. We are interested in bridging conversations across academic, farming, agriculture spheres and beyond, to all of us: those who prepare, deliver, buy and/or eat food. These bridging conversations are a bit harder to come by.

Why a MOOC? Perhaps two reasons. One is we can’t assume what we need to know about our agriculture systems will simply land on our doorsteps. We need to be proactive. The second is that agriculture is inextricably tied to our communities. Any “curriculum” to learn needs to be connected to the community. The community IS the curriculum. So together, we can explore questions like: What is the right thing to do? How are we to make sense of taking all these conversations and use them to help us make good choices? Do I buy local or organic? How do I make responsible decisions about food? We think this MOOC concept might be a bridging mechanism for these urgent and juicy conversations. We learn by keeping the discussion going, and using that learning to inform our decisions. A MOOC is a way of organizing a discussion… a topic based virtual coffee shop.

 Using a simple phone bridge and a web based meeting tool, we’ll ask ourselves “what are the important, juicy conversations we want to have around sustainable agriculture? Who wants to have these conversations?”  We’ll use this as fodder to try and imagine a sustainable agriculture MOOC, or as we are fondly calling it, AgriMOOC. We’d like to know what you think. We’ll share out what we learn here: https://agrimooc.wordpress.com/ - Note that to the right of this post there is a little box where you can subscribe to posts from the blog — and get all the news right in your email in box!