It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’

A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh.

Over the last few weeks, it has been proven that ASCILITE has a strong community focus as a pattern in the correspondence with the organising committee has emerged:

When is the conference dinner, and what is the theme?

Coat Check” (CC BY-NC 2.0) by Jeremy Brooks

This has been the conversation in the committee meetings, and certainly the tone of prospective delegates.

ASCILITE has been a supporter of open access, open education, and open publishing, so it makes sense for the organisation to support an open dinner.

Using the theme ‘Remix, Reuse, Repurpose’, you are cordially invited to join us at the ASCILITE Open Dinner.

Assemble your evening attire by purchasing clothing from an op shop or similar, by borrowing it from a friend, or shopping your own wardrobe archive. Your mission – should you wish to accept it – is to locate clothes that could be reused or repurposed for the ASCILITE dinner. Perhaps you’d like to bring out your high school formal attire, a bridesmaid’s dress or a suit you wore to an event a couple of decades ago? You might even like to remix some items, combining items to create a new ensemble that will draw looks of (dare I say) open admiration? (See what I did there?)

The theme is drawn from three of the ‘Five Rs’ of openness. When educators use free and openly licenced content, they are able to:

  • Retain – keep a copy of the resource
  • Redistribute – to share it with an audience
  • Remix – to combine it with other openly licenced resources to create new material
  • Revise – to alter or update the resource (often to suit local contexts), and
  • Repurpose – to change the format or context of the resource.

As you prepare for the dinner, you may well ask ‘what of retaining and redistributing?’ We have thought of how to incorporate the final two ‘R’s’ into the dinner – you’ll be given the opportunity to donate parts of your ensemble back to a collection point at ASCILITE after the event so they can be redistributed back to charity stores.

Looking for a bit of outfit inspiration? Committee member Carmel O’Sullivan did a bit of preparatory op shopping and came up with a snappy ensemble!

Practitioners approaching any open activity though need to be supported through ‘mediating artefacts’, that is, resources that support the practitioner to understand the activity and how to locate resources. In this spirit, we’ll be publishing some future posts that will direct you to the best locations for your conference fashion to support you all in assembling outfits fit for an Open Ball.

Do you remember that the post started with community, though? (Or have your thoughts perhaps already been overtaken with notions of second-hand chic?) If you have ideas, places to share, or want to organise a group shopping trip, use the comments section below.

All the important info

Location: Picnic Point
Time: 6.15pm til 11pm
Getting there: Buses will depart the three conference hotels at 6pm
Theme: OpenRemix, Reuse or Repurpose your outfit!

Further details about the dinner are available on the conference dinner page.