It’s been a while since I got a keynote invite that had me checking flight schedules. For many good reasons, nowadays I give most of my keynotes from my home office. So it was extra exciting to see the announcement for the 2026 Annual Conference organised by ASCILITE come out last week!
Although I worked closely with colleagues in Australia and New Zealand during my time at ALT, this is one event I never made it to in person, and to be invited to keynote this year means a lot to me. The theme of the conference is “The Future is Connection: Collaboration, Creativity and Compassion in a Digital Society” and that’s right up my street.
So all being well, at the end of this year I’ll be making my way to Brisbane for a week of conferencing with colleagues whom I have known and worked alongside with for over a decade, but many of whom I’ve never met in person.
Registration and the Call for Proposals will come out soon, and sponsorship opportunities are already available, so reach out to the excellent organising committee if you’d like to get involved!
Closer to home
I’m also really looking forward to ILTA’s 25th Anniversary Conference which is taking place in early June in Dublin, and which looks very sharp indeed in terms of both the themes and the folk involved. If you haven’t yet seen Eamon Costello’s conference intro video, or connected with the fantastic duo of conference co-chairs, Rob Lowney and Kate Molloy, then you are missing out.
The Call for Proposals is closing soon, 1 March, and I know I am working on my submission 🙂
I’ve also volunteered to be a member of the OER26 Conference Committee, also scheduled to take place in June, and I am looking forward to being involved with this, my probably favourite open education event of the past decade.
Global open (reclaimed)
Much sooner on my calendar is Open Education Week 2026, which has been a firm fixture in my year for a long time, and which keeps getting better every year (in no small part thanks to the masterful efforts of Alan Levine and his OE Global colleagues who make putting together a week-long (or year-long!) global event across every timezone available EASY! Hats off, friends, for walking the walk and bringing us all together.
Like in the past two years I’m excited to contribute to this event with colleagues at Reclaim, another team that makes open educational technology look easy, and who tirelessly produce and share useful open resources on one of my favourite blogs on the web (disclaimer: I get to contribute posts there, too, and will indeed shortly publish our plans for Open Education Week, so look out for that!).
As I blogged earlier this year, I am making a concerted effort to find more ways to travel and connect with folk in person, and my trip to Scotland in January really inspired and energised me, giving me more motivation to make plans for the next six months.
If you are heading to any of these events, get in touch and let’s get together for a catch up and a coffee.