My website is a junk drawer full of weird and random things. A wild mind has been living there for a good long while. I used to blog a lot, but when I started doing a newsletter 10 years ago, I slowly, slowly adjusted myself to writing personally about once a week. I continued to blog about projects and work stuff. Blogs written all over the web. I make sure that no matter where something is posted first, if I wrote it, or collaborated on it, it ends up on my website. And so my website is a mishmash of wild and wonderful things.
I’m going to write a blog post about this junk drawer and the things I find inside of it. Perhaps I will pull out some happiness, some silliness, some sadness and a little bit of incredulity. I will write about blogging as an extension of self, a way to see what you’ve learned, who you were and who you have become.
Link to the blog: https://www.laurahilliger.com/blog/
Link to the full post: https://www.laurahilliger.com/writing/my-website-is-a-junk-drawer/
Session Resources:
Things change (or, Montaigne and the Open Web)
This post, which I’ve already written, discusses my changing relationship with the Open Web over the twenty years I’ve been blogging. Using the lens of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, which was a form of proto-blogging, I explore the value of sharing things openly.
Link to the post: https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2025/11/04/things-change-or-montaigne-and-the-open-web/
Session Resources:
https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/tag/montaigne/
Combobulating in the #WildDS106
What happens when a group of distributed, creative, un-organized remixers decide to collaborate?
Magic, fun and a bit of chaos!
The only thing to expect when working with other remixers is never to know what to expect, as Monty Python might have said.
But what transpires will exceed expectations. Over the last few weeks a group of us have been collaborating to design a new online space to celebrate DS106 (your reflex should be to yell “#4Life” or “Make Art Damnit”) and especially the Daily Create.
As well as writing posts and pages directly onto the website, we are also tagging selected posts on our own blogs to syndicate them so we can collate them on our new web space. Some of us are tagging these blog posts with #WildDS106, others of us are using our regular tag of #DS106 – however people want to have their posts syndicated is up to them – after all this is #DS106 and the only rule is that there are no rules!
In no particular order, here’s what each of us have been doing, and what we want to trumpet loudly about:
- Alan Levine (blogging as CogDogBlog, Mastodoing as cogdog@cosocial.ca) Find hopefully a few comflobuating posts plus more syndicated from my blog tagged #wildds106 and added bits to the Remixers and of course the pet’s corner pages. I was a fan and active participant in the first open ds106 in 2011, taught a few sections, tinkered much on the web sites, and can’t stop doing the daily creates.
- Sarah Honeychurch (blogging as NomadWarMachine, Mastotootling as Nomadwarmachine. Wrote something to explain bricolage and remix, asked questions about socks, has been posting her responses to the TDC on her own blog so they syndicate through. I have been doing the daily create every day for several years now and I am addicted.
- Talky Tina (blogging as TalkyTina, not really saying much on Masto as TalkyTina). Has a page that her TrueFriends added in her honour.
- Kevin Hodgson (blogging as dogtrax in both blog form and Mastodon form). I dove into the #ds106 tag on Flickr, reaching out to people from across the years to see if their connection to Daily Create still has resonance. The Daily Create is my morning routine, along with a cup of coffee (and sometimes, a banana). I’ve been doing it nearly every single day for many years now.
- Wendy Taleo (blogging as Walk My World for this event and generally at Tales in eLearning, Mastodoing as @wentale) I float in and out of the Daily Create over the years. I love that it’s a noticing place, a gentle place and somewhere I can create, connect and learn from. The value in rewilding my connections and learning is learning 4Life. So let’s #WildDS106!
- Mark Corbett Wilson (connectingislearning.com and talkingwithmachines.com, @mcorbettwilson and @faberglas (old) on social media) After a ReclaimTV or Community stream, I canna remember because I have CRS, I talked with Todd and we agreed we had so much fun at the Reclaim Summer Camp we should do something for Reclaim Open. I offered (I know, I know) this spare URL and to slap up a WP site to brush up on the easy stuff (!) after more than a year of federating. That reminds me, the 67 emails and counting we have going is the only thread I have longer than the one I had with Reclaim support after I installed my new self-hosted Ghost in Reclaim Cloud on the 1st day of version 6.0. I digress.
As the noob, I discovered #ds106 after I learned Marshall Ganz’s Story of Self method at a workshop, found the ds center in Berkeley, and trained with Joe Lambert to facilitate digital storytelling. I have used ds106 to learn to use this junk I helped make by working 20 years in Santa Clara, CA. Not a coder, I’m a retired (or unemployable?) high tech glassblower, artist and designer. I spent a few years at UVic’s DHSI and a couple at UMaryWashington’s DigPedLab. Now a Critical Digital Humanist, storymapper, and ds facilitator with StoryCenter.org, I play with all the stuff and sometimes do Daily Creates.
Did someone say trumpet?
- Paul Bond Regularly runs the DS106 course that sits alongside the TDC, blogs at RaptnRent. Makes DS106 socks.
- John Johnston, a bit late to this party/doc. I first mentioned ds106 on my blog in 2011. I most blogged about DS106 on my 106 blog (2011 to 2017). But I’ll put the wild stuff on my main blog. I’ve attempted a few rounds of course and strangely prefer assignments to dailies. Hopefully I’ll blog a couple of #wildDS106 posts over the week and try some/all dailies. I am particularly interested in the do what you want/like in your own way aspect of DS106. It has been of great assistance to me in learning bits and pieces and thinking about learning & teaching.
- Ron Leunissen Still top of the leaderboard for completing daily creates, and also for submitting ideas for activities, though less active since he retired. Has two lovely dogs called Coco and Bella.
- Todd Conaway Blogs at The Whole Classroom. Toots as Todd Conaway. Part of the core team who planning this whole initiative. Wrote the Faculty Blender page.
Want to see more? Head over to our webpages and check them out. Prepare to be combobulated*!
*some of us can never get the word or the domain correct!
