I mentioned in class yesterday that I published an article last week, which I cowrote with my friend and colleague Pete Rorabaugh. It’s about the theoretical rationale behind Domain of One’s Own: “Building Community and Critical Literacies with the Domain of One’s Own Incubator.” You don’t have to read it, but I thought you might find it interesting. It’s published in a peer-reviewed online academic journal, but we kept it fairly short and tried our best to write it in such a way that it is accessible for a wide audience. I’m interested in any response you might have to offer if you do read it.

Pete and I wrote that article collaboratively in a Google doc. In fact, Pete and I collaborate in Google docs very frequently and we’ve both become more and more interested in how this sort of technology is reshaping the way we write. I’m not really intending to proselytize Google docs to you, but it is my sense that it does offer up some intriguing new ways to collaborate that can help you push past the sort of writing you became used to doing before coming to college. I’m purposely pushing it on you a little bit as a way of having you try it out–I found Google docs a little off-putting and awkward at first, but now I never open up MS Word unless I absolutely have to. (By the way, I agree that it’s time to give up on Microsoft’s word processor.)

There’s a link from that article to the website I’ve built for the Domain Incubator conference, which is now going on next week. (You might recognize the theme that I used for that site… shhh, don’t tell anyone I’m repeating myself. They all think I’m constantly innovating.) If you’re interested in coming to any part of the conference, you’re welcome to do so. Or if there’s anything there (or on the Twitter feed for the conference, which should really heat up next week), bring it up in class or talk to me in person. You might be interested to know that we’re using Google docs for every session of the conference, so people can participate in the event even if they can’t be there in person. Here’s a link to the index page that links out to all the other documents. Moderators will seed those pages with links to readings and resources and some questions to start off discussion and then while we’re discussing these issues in the session at the conference, people who are present and virtual attendees will all be collaborating inside the documents to collect notes, point to other resources, raise new questions, propose answers to problems, and so on. Even if you can’t make it to any part of the conference next week, feel free to jump in the documents and contribute wherever you would like to–it would be cool to have some undergraduate representation in the docs! You can be part of the academic conversation!