As the initial schemer of this idea, I've been fascinated to see what might happen when people started posting. After the first week, I am genuinely more interested in the panels that have presented thus far--I especially like having a lot of conference material in one place and the links to visual material is terrific.
We are not generating much commentary on the subjects, which was both my fear and perhaps my expectation. As someone who teaches new media, I find new media to still retain a lot of qualities to old media in terms of interactivity of expression. And with subjects as scholarly as the ones we have presented so far, even with the questions that the posters put forth, they require a type of intellectual engagement that casual reading doesn't naturally engender.
But with that said, I still very much think the posting we're doing is very much worthwhile. Reading and thinking about these subjects does not have to be in realtime. It can take place over weeks and months, and I won't be surprised if I think of something to add to earlier posts sometime soon after I digest the posts more fully. And even these discussions really happen in the sessions themselves, in the hallways after, or over dinner and drinks, I still think it will have been worth it. Blog on!
Jonathan Silverman
Hear hear! (Or here here, but no, I think it's the first version.)
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to chime in to Jonathan's points, and especially to emphasize three things, for future posters, commenters, and everybody else too:
1) We're getting lots of views, over 100 every day so far. So the voices and ideas are getting out there!
2) Please feel free to comment on earlier posts whenever you read them, I'll make sure to let the posters know that they have a comment, and the ideas will always be worth sharing!
3) And no matter what, these are great indications of the breadth and depth of our conference's topics, our great group of presenters and participants, and American Studies scholarship.
Keep up the great work, all!
Ben Railton