Learning2gether ten years after, and going on beyond episode 430

I often feel guilty about not posting more here, but I blog most regularly these days at my Learning2gether blog,
https://learning2gether.net/

Learning2gether was an offshoot in 2010 of the three WiAOC conferences we famously crowd-sourced under the auspices of Webheads in Action in 2005, 2007, and 2009 (http://vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/wiaoc_index.htm). L2g has been going strong since 2010 and is almost up to its 430th episode as I write this post. Normally I post notices of events on the L2g Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/groups/webheadsinaction/. I also keep an index of all L2g events, going back since their inception in 2010, here:
http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/34456755/archiveindex

I'm going there now to retrieve the following information which I need to paste here in order to create the state of play I'm focusing on in this blog post.

Learning2gether episode 426 took place on Tue, Oct 15, 2019. I soon afterwards blogged it, but I had always meant to go back and 'complete' the post. I have by now found time to revise this post and annotate it by adding further anecdotes and detail and expanding on my links to further information. So even if you have seen it before, you might want to revisit'
https://learning2gether.net/2019/10/15/steven-herder-interviews-vance-stevens-in-the-itdi-teachers-room/

Meanwhile, Electronic Village Online coordinators and moderators (http://evosession.pbworks.com) have been gearing up for EVO2020, which is the 20th year of EVO by the way, and as I am one of the EVO coordinators I was involved in the EVO moderator PD (professional development) month which has been taking place during this time. Each Sunday during the month there were events where moderators were supposed to attend and raise questions and discuss issues relating to EVO. Since this was ostensibly EVO business, I didn't feel right about inviting all and sundry, which is why I never made an announcement on any of the L2g spaces, but Jane Chien and I were responsible for preparing the third week of moderator PD (in Schoology, https://app.schoology.com/course/2264046012/) and the topic was what group spaces to use, such as Schoology, and how to replace groups that had recently disappeared; e.g. the Google+ Communities which had served us so well, and YahooGroups, which EVO Coordinators had been using (and both groups have now gone over to Groups.io).

Since the topic was relevant to anyone involved in eLearning or professional development through communities of practice, Jane and I suppressed the business part and held the session as a discussion, and produced L2g Episode 427 on Sun, Nov 3, 2019: Vance Stevens and Jane Chien host Learning2gether with Week 3 EVO Moderator Professional Development – Online spaces, certificates, and badges
https://learning2gether.net/2019/11/03/learning2gether-with-week-3-evo-moderator-professional-development-online-spaces-certificates-and-badges/

Again I did not announce the EVO Moderator PD Month event for the following Sunday on Learning2gether, but that link above contains at the end of it, a video embed starting at 25 min 35 seconds, which is where Nellie asked for moderators to come on and discuss the online spaces they had chosen for their sessions. First up was Graham Stanley, who spoke about how his Escape the Room session is organized, and he invited me to join him in the discussion, which also makes interesting listening. Here it is, starting with Graham:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1547&v=0W--5Kuk2mA&feature=emb_logo

Heike Philp, who co-moderates the Escape the Room session with Graham, was at that event and she mentioned in it that she was doing a simulcast from Firenze in a week's time on educational applications of virtual worlds, and I asked her to send me the information. When I hadn't heard from her a few days later and as time was growing short, I sent her a reminder --  and, as she is a writer at http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/, she didn't reply to me directly, but wrote up the information directly on the wiki and asked me afterwards if I could come on in the Q and A period and take 5 min to talk about EVO Minecraft MOOC. Because she had entered it in the wiki and invited me to speak, I made it the next L2g episode, which is archived as L2g Episode 428, Wed, Nov 13, 2019 -  Learning2gether with Heike Philp and GUINEVERE simulcasting colloquium on games in virtual worlds
https://learning2gether.net/2019/11/13/learning2gether-with-heike-philp-and-guinevere-simulcasting-colloquium-on-games-in-virtual-worlds/

So that brings us up to the present where on Monday Nov 18, the annual Global Education Conference starts. It's a 3 day conference where presenters who fit fixed, but also flexible, criteria self-select to put their events up on a Ning and then schedule themselves to present at the conference. You can find more information here:
http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded#MonNov18WedNov20The9thAnnualGECGlobalEducationConference

I'll be co-presenting on day 3 of the conference with Hanaa Khamis, who has been hosting L2g events recently from Egypt in my L2g Zoom Room. Our presentation is on Wednesday Nov 20 on upgrading teachers' tech-enabled pedagogical skills via the power of participatory learning through communities of practice and PLNs of like-minded peers. That event is announced here:
http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded#WedNov200900UTCHanaaKhamisandVanceStevensatGECnbspParticipatorycultureofCPDthroughselfsustainingPLNs

And finally (or at least, it will be time for a break) when I did the interview with iTDi back in October, I told Steven Herder and Phil Brown that I was very curious to talk to to them about their business iTDi, which has some free components which they put on while trying to balance against the bottom line, so I got them to agree to come on L2g on my terms and discuss those issues.That happens on Thursday Nov 21, and there is more information here:
http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded#ThuNov21noonUTCSteveHerderandPhilipShigeoBrownoniTDiandthechallengeofcommercialviabilityvssocialcommunityneeds