Thread by @culanth

☀️MORNING AFTER☀️
1PM Havana Time
Sunday, May 10th

Join the conference organizers–Paul Christians, @GabrielDattatre, @mayanthileilani, @AndreaMuehleba1, & @arjshankar–for a discussion about #Distribute2020 and the future of #VirtualConferencing. Moderated by @anandspandian.

For folks who are still operating on #Distribute2020 time:
13:00 Havana time (UTC -4)
is 17:00 Dakar time (UTC)
is 22:00 Lahore time (UTC +5)

@AndreaMuehleba1 talking about the purpose of the #Distribute2020 #nodes pre-pandemic & the desire to solicit and showcase content from these nodes. We're so grateful to the #GreekNode, #DelhiNode, #ChileNode, #SAnode #EcuadorNode, etc for all of their organizing & contributions!

@mayanthileilani stresses the ethos of collaborative decision-making and outreach that was both at times tedious and central to the overall ethic of #Distribute2020 and the organizing/curatorial process.

@GabrielDattatre
talking about the #HowTo videos (Joyce Yuqi Liu) & hangout sessions that were conducted in order to prepare the accepted #Distribute2020 panelists with imagning + creating their multimodal content in ethical, engaging, & accessible ways.
distribute.utoronto.ca/how-to/

@arjshankar discusses the conviviality fostered by the livestream and the #VirtualHallway. For him, decolonizing&unsettling the traditional conference model was always at the forefront, be that through keeping it non cost-prohibitive to working on a decolonial map #Distribute2020

Paul Christians now talking about the ways that colonialism, racism, and ableism etc. are baked in to our #tech - something the #Distribute2020 organizers wrestled with regularly over the past year, along with questions of language and translation.

@mayanthileilani discussing how the #Pandemic impacted #Distribute2020 planning, focusing on the threats of Zoom bombing & the violence other organizations and virtual events had experienced. A lot of time &energy went into gathering info on best practices and responding to this.

@GabrielDattatre + @arjshankar reflect on the important decision about whether or not to cancel #Distribute2020 under pandemic conditions and the 'register of care' that informed the organizing over recent weeks. @AndreaMuehleba1 thanks the student teams involved in subtitling!

Paul tells us that there were over 981 active #Distribute2020 registrants as well as 3200+ unique site visitors. People tuned in from 104 counties and people visited from 1069 cities around the world! US participation made up only about 30% of the user base. Athens represented!

@Hanelizqui talks about the #Distribute2020 access statement & the importance of learning from the experiences of our disabled peers when designing+ planning virtual conferences. She thanks Paul for his work on the the online access tools +the team for allowing her to draft this!

Penelope Papailias from the #GreekNode and @AndreaMuehleba1 talk about a 'pay it forward' or suspended-registration model that might be useful in future versions of #Distribute2020, as 10$ USD is prohibitive for many, whether in a pandemic or not.

Sinjini Mukherjee discusses how we might further decenter and unsettle both the US and academic institutions as 'hubs' for engagement in future iterations of virtual conferences like #Displace18 and #Distribute2020.

@AndreaMuehleba1 and @mayanthileilani talk about the CFP & the possibility of thinking across not only themes but capacities & how the multimodal format led more junior scholars to submit content than senior scholars.There was a nice intergenerational element to #Distribute2020

@GabrielDattatre reminding everyone to check out the 21 films at the #Distribute2020 #FilmFestival! Sydney notes that there is a tentative plan for a discussion on the film Línea on Wednesday at 2PM EST (Havana) and chat with filmmaker Male Vizcarra! @SocietyVisAnth

@anandspandian wraps up by talking about the intimacy and affective register of the #VirtualHallway and #Distribute2020 overall & how the conference lives on well beyond May 7-9th. As @yarimarbonilla and @mayanthileilani note, we're in our homes + there are no flights to catch!