Town Hall Meetings
The Way We Will Have Become
The Future (Histories) of Computers and Writing
 
The Story behind the Idea
 
Dene: Beckster, if I remember correctly, it all began in the produce section at Whole Foods store. It was the weekend of Mick [Doherty] and Sandye's [Thompson] wedding--and also my birthday. You had driven up to Dallas with [your 9-month-old son] Landon and stayed with John [Barber] and me at the condo. On Saturday afternoon after the wedding, you and I went to Whole Foods to buy a birthday cake for me. Actually birthday cakes--chocolate *and* vanilla--since John can't eat chocolate, and I couldn't imagine a birthday without one. 

Becky: Oh yeah, that's right. I'd forgotten that we were celebrating both a wedding and a birthday, and doing double duty with two cakes. Funny how celebrations and food often provide the context for creative ventures. Little did we know that there was yet another creative endeavor in the works. I found out days later I was pregnant with Ellis (this after several glasses of champagne at the wedding and wine at your house . . . sigh). 

Dene [nods]: You called me not too long after the weekend and told me about being pregnant again. As for the champagne, Ellis will undoubtably grow up with a good palate, which IMHO is akin to good critical thinking skills. Remember the wine tasting Slang [Susan Lang] and I put on at the CCCCs in Phoenix? In "Vino Veritas Est." 

Becky: You bet! And I remember the informal ones that preceded the more formal one in Phoenix. Once again, a good way to build community and to encourage new ideas, new ways of thinking. I know that by learning more about wine--how to describe it, categorize it, appreciate it--has helped me in other types of thinking, and in other contexts. Could it be that the online versions of our interactions are food for the mind/soul? 

Dene [laughs]: Well, wine *is* a living, evolving thing. So, I guess we can indeed think of interacting with it as a kind of intellectual--and even for many of my wine buddies--a kind of spiritual experience. Certainly collaborations, like sharing food with others, partnering in a marriage, writing, can be for us the source of light and life. Yeah, so it makes perfect sense that you and I were in the produce section, after attending Mick and Sandye's wedding, buying a few things for our dinner when we started talking about the looming deadline for the CWC98. . . 

Becky: Actually, Dene, as I recall, it *really* started in the bakery, as you noted on the phone. But it was Whole Foods, so at least we can take pride in the fact that we are superior shoppers. 

Dene: Well, wherever "it" started, "it" was a potent mix of ingredients that got us to Gainesville and the CWC98. That it was food that inspired us probably wouldn't surprise anyone who knows either of us very well--says the woman who is, at this very moment, licking Haagen-Dazs (Chocolate Chocolate Chip, of course) off her spoon. :) 

Becky: Hey, not *all* of us made it to Gainesville. But CWC98, yes. You know, one of the thing that seemed to inspire community at the ECB was great food: at meetings, at events, etc. there always seemed to be some kind of food around. I think perhaps that's why the computers and writing folks get along/think so well together: We know how to eat. 

Dene [licking her spoon again]: I think about some of the great literary food people. Gertrude Stein and her "Food" section in Tender Buttons. I think she ate her way through ex-patriotism. Then there is Isak Dineson's Babette's Feast. and my personal favorite, Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. All three works emphasize the connection among eating, community and the creative act. Interesting that they were all written by women. [Smiles] Anywayyyyyyy, you asked me, I think, what I was proposing for the CWC. I think I said that I really didn't know and was frustrated, trying to think of something. 

Becky: Of course, what you didn't realize was that I was trying to get fresh ideas from you by picking your brain. 

Dene [winking at Becky]: Like grapes from the vine, eh? I think what we discovered at that moment was that we were both searching for something new. Our frustration over *not* being able to find it was the very thing that inspired us to ponder the state of the field. And to be honest, I had been worried for a while about that issue. As an academic field driven by technology (I mean, we have been calling ourselves *Computers* and Writing, for god's sake--and note which of the two comes first), our future seems to hang on innovative technology and effective ways we can use it in our classrooms. Even Nancy's Kaplan's suggestion at the CWC98 that we call it "Computers and Reading" still puts technology in the forefront of what we do. 

Becky: That's a good point. Innovative technology, effective teaching, and theories that tie the two together. That's what our field seems to dance around, and yet we'd not seen as much of a wedding of these three, at least not that really grabbed us, for a while. So I think we were trying to find something that grabbed us--and others--for this conference. 

Dene: Yeah. . . so there we were at Whole Foods strolling through the seafood section. The selections were incredible. Smoked trout, mussels, fresh salmon steaks, crawfish tails, crab claws. In the midst of these, you and I talked about variety of topics that have been discussed in the past at CW conferences, from Ann Arbor to Hawaii, and the changes that have taken place in the field and in our lives. From the networked classroom to students writing themselves in MOOs. From your marriage to my divorce. None of these developments were that long ago! 

Becky: And let's not forget the all the other creative, communal forces: your job, the OWL at ECB, our dissertations, children, our professional community, your new house, and so forth. That creative, community spirit has infused the conference and made it something special, and I didn't want it to wane; I wanted it to evolve, like our technology, our students, our thinking, ourselves. 

Dene: Like wine evolves, eh? Yes, change inspires creativity, I do believe, and god knows we had seen a lot of it that year. But if we see life as a journey and journey implies change, and change ignites creativity, then we can't truly live without it. It is the lifeblood of our existence. If I mention Dante's Commedia and Homer's Odyssey, do you think people will roll their eyes at me? [Laughs] Probably. But the bottom line though, Beckster, is that the change that you and I were undergoing implied that we were really living.  :)  Now look at us, you and Locke [Carter] left Austin and are living in Lubbock and working at [Texas] Tech, and John [Barber] and I, after a long intellectual partnership, got married and began our life partnering. And look at John. . . he left Natchitoches, moved to Dallas, got married, became a homeowner, and landed a job in Ft. Worth--all in a summer. Talk about fodder for creativity. :) 

Becky: Actually *grape must* is a more agreeable image, but yes, change inspires creativity. . . 

Dene [laughs]: I have always been struck by the creativity and innovation of our field. If I remember correctly, it was Ann Arbor at the CWC93 that hypertext dominated the conversation. At CWC94 in Columbia, Amy Bruckman introduced the notion of the MOOs at a keynote there. In '95 at El Paso, the conversation turned on the theme of "boundaries" defined, it seemed, by gender and race. '96 in Logan, I remember debates about student online publishing. The web, though it had been discussed for a number of years, came to the forefront. I heard papers on the advantages of syllawebs and webfolios. Hawaii--Judi's [Kirkpatrick] conference--gave us Howard Rheingold's and Michael Joyce's talks about virtual reality, WELL, and the MOO. And my short history with the field does not go back far enough. . . 

Becky: But it does serve as a good outline of these conferences, which, in turn, have partially defined us and our field. What, in your opinion, were we trying to make Gainesville remembered for? 

Dene: Interest in the avant garde? The visual text as in Cynthia Haynes, Jan Rune Holmevik, Victor Vitanza, Diane Davis and Beth Kolko's piece. The performance text as in Kathleen Yancey and Michael Spooner's piece. The vocal text as in Janet Cross's piece. Bill Condon and Hugh Burns singing "The Tigger Song" is hard to forget.  :)  People were very playful, it seemed to me, this time around. Like everyone was trying to find something new, some newness in the familiar, some joy in the things they were doing that were new. It excited me. Playfulness is a very important component of creativity. Homo ludens. . . to borrow Johann Huizinga's title. 

Becky: Agreed. After two kids, my belief in the importance of play in the context of education/learning has been revitalized. I think that's why Eric [Crump] and I rebelled by writing "It's Fun to Have Fun" a loooong time ago. Fred [Kemp] danced around this topic recently on ACW: "As Wozniak reminds us in the latest Wired, most great ideas die in planning because people try to pin down the "knowing" thing. The desire to avoid getting out in front of your headlights too often leaves you idling in neutral." It's his "leap before you look" philosophy that, while maybe not the best way to cross the road, really does help to create a sense of enthusiasm in our field. Fred does that well, and when this leap is then analyzed critically, a la what Gail [Hawisher] and Cindy [Selfe] urge us to do in the Rhetoric of Technology article, it can inform the next leap. I think we're ready for a leap. While I hadn't attended the C&W in Hawaii, until then I'd been to every one since Minnesota, and I was beginning to see--or, rather, sense--a dangerous feeling of boredom with the sameness of it all. Oh, there were several stand out sessions, and I don't want to sound too critical, but as innovators, critical thinkers, early adopters, I felt like we had somehow talked ourselves into a rut. To be fair, some repetition was (and still is) important, since so many new folks were coming in every day, but I wanted us to try re-seeing--revisioning--the conference, and I knew you'd have some good ideas. 

Dene: As you were saying this, I was thinking about the way I cook. I look at a recipe and the ingredients it calls for, get a feel for the general framework for the preparation of the thing I am making, then shut the cookbook and commence to cooking, forgetting some of the ingredients, improvising along the way as I forget what is *supposed* to go in, cooking it the way it seems to me best way to cook it. Following someone else's ideas just doesn't taste as good as finding my own recipe, my own way into the thing. So long before the Gainesville conference had started and long before the proposals were due, I was fretting over what, if anything, I could contribute that wasn't just following everyone else's recipe. It seemed to me that so much territory about CAI / CMI had already been covered. Email, the Web, hypertext, MOOs, Daedalus, Connect, webfolios, syllawebs, electronic publishing, gender. . . so much had been said and said *well* that I did not know if I could add anything to the conversation that was me, my own, new. 

Becky: Well, you COULD add to the conversation, but it reminds me of students who want to write about popular topics: How do you say something so new, so different, or in such a unique way that people will listen/learn/be persuaded? 

Dene: Yeah, well I don't think it is a confidence problem. One of the things I love most about our field is that people are such friendly readers and do encourage "newbies" to the field to speak up. I think it, at least for me, was more a desire to give something important back to our community. And I like pushing the envelop of form a bit. So, maybe my translation of form focused on the "form of presentation."  Yours too, obviously, because we seemed to hit on this idea simultaneously. 

Becky: I agree about our field embracing newbies and giving oldies (ack!) a voice, too. I hope I'm not too Pollyannaish about things, but I love being part of something that has the enthusiasm that comes with new blood and new ideas, yet keeps me a little off balance because I need to learn new things. I guess I felt like I needed a dose of "newness". And to alter form of presentation seemed natural in our field. 

Dene: Hmmm, natural. Like natural foods. . . whole foods? . . .Then we got to the bakery. I'll never forget the chocolate cake we bought. A layer of black icing a mile thick. Bittersweet, too. Landon wore that icing well, I must say, all over his face and bib.  :)  Waiting for the young woman to box up our goodies, we got to the subject of where our field was headed. Where writing was going. Where technology was taking us or where we may be taking technology. We picked up our cakes and moved to the check-out stand. 

Becky: Too bad we couldn't have our cake and eat it, too.  :-)  Ok, so it *didn't* start at the bakery, but perhaps that's what I remember, because that when the yeast began to rise, so to speak. . . 

Dene [cringing]: Aren't we pushing the metaphor a bit too much here?  :) 

Becky: . . . That's when ideas started growing. We talked about what was great for us: the community, the exchange of ideas, the teaching, the students, the enthusiasm, and wondered how we could capture that in a new way this time around. And I remember invoking True [Anthony Rue] as someone who could really do something new and innovative, since he had been doing so many new and innovative things in the field. 

Dene: Yeah, talk about a Renaissance Man. Architecture and writing. Anthony took a big chance on us pulling this off well. I was a nervous wreck and had prepared my moderator's comments in advance so that I would not flub up everything. Anal retentivity never hurts in situations like this, I think. 

Becky: Nor does...uh, anal explosiveness? Would that be the opposite? It's sort of the yin and yang I was referring to earlier: leaping before you look, but analyzing the results of the leap and using them to inform your next leap. 

Dene [holding her nose]: Anal explosiveness! Spoken like a true mother of two young kids. 

Becky: I think I took on an Eric Crump-like stance with the virtual conference: the more, the merrier, and while we had moderators, the conversation was the thing. 

Dene: Speaking of merry, do you remember buying my birthday cakes????? I always like people who buy me chocolate for my birthday, Becky.  :) 

Becky: Doesn't everyone?? 

Dene: No.  :(  But maybe they will now. As you were writing the check, I said the only thing I had thought about doing for the CWC was a paper about the future of the field. Not issues like tenure and promotion, or hiring practices, or publishing, but a paper that talked about the kinds of things we were discussing right there. 

Becky: It might've been a credit card; I doubt that even Whole Foods would take an out-of-town check. And while we're still on food, I want to assert what a trooper Landon was: sitting in the car to and from Dallas, being dragged all around the town, even attending a wedding (and when he heard mommy's voice he almost stopped it, as I recall). Yet through it all he was, for the most part, a happy camper. He deserved to wear that cake! 

Dene: Thank god, Keith [Dorrick] was there at the wedding to distract Landon. I thought it was great Keith came all that way for Mick and Sandye. 

Becky: I, too, was grateful to Keith; he made sure that Landon was a pleasant distraction and not a rude interruption. Maybe it takes a C&W community to raise a child.... Great wedding, btw! A communal event, a celebration where different voices were heard, everyone participated either passively or actively, and one where tradition was honored yet boundaries were pushed. 

Dene [shakes her head]: I thought that was the best part about our Town Halls, too. People. And they were talking. People new to the field. People who had been around since the beginning of the CWC. People who seldom talked in sessions. And Eric caught a lot of it in his logs. Mikie [Day], I saw, was taking notes for his own conference next year. 

Becky: Like I said, the conversation's the thing. Now, as we put it together on the web, I wonder what it means for us, for others, for our field. Or maybe that's "big think"; perhaps I should be wondering IF it means anything. 

Dene [paraphrasing Shakespeare]: *Play* is the thing. [Laughs] I think it means a lot. Looking back at the work that John has done linking all those texts together into one cohesive webtext for this coverweb, we can experience a part of the conference. I think it may set the pace for the way future special conference sessions get re-represented. Imagine if we could have captured "The State of the MOO" session in the same way. Archived textually and graphically. The best people in the field, Tari [Fanderclai], Jan, Cynthia, and Janet [Cross], talking about MOOs. 

Becky: I agree, on many levels: personal, technological, the ease with which old, difficult technologies were mastered, and so forth. It's good to stand back and see the big picture, which Cindy, Paul [LeBlanc], Gail, and Charlie [Moran] were doing with their book. I think we wanted that kind of thinking in the conference. 

Dene: Yes, we were responding to the challenge they provided in their history of the field when we devised the Town Halls: What is the future that follows the past? You said you thinking the same thing and thought we could give a paper together. Is this right? I do know that by the time we got home, we had come up with the community meeting idea, and by the time we told John all about our ideas (as we unpacked the grocery bags in the kitchen), we had formed a trio and were naming the sessions (we had somehow managed to expand it to three) "Town Halls." We had thought it best to invite people who had a long history in the field, as well as newer innovative members of the community, to answer a series of generative questions we three would come up with. 

Becky: I feel the same way, though I remember being intimidated initially by this crowd. I hope I can remember that always and be as inclusive as possible. As I tried to think about a topic as big as THE FUTURE, I think I was remembering a panel I'd seen at C's a long while back where a bunch of famous rhetoricians talked about what exactly rhetoric was, now and in the future. I remember feeling like that exchange of ideas was powerful for me and my thinking, enlarging my scope, if you will, and the ensuing discussion was catalytic: It got me to think about rhetorics rather than only the classically based rhetoric I had been coming to know at Ohio State. I think the panel might've been less powerful if the participants didn't feel free to engage in a free for all discussion with each other after their statements. That was the best part. 

Dene: Was it that night or a bit later as we actually wrote the proposal? I can't remember, but I do remember sitting on the floor of my condo with you, John, Landon, and a few of my neighbors who dropped by, and devouring that huge plate of cake and being so excited about asking Tony if he would be amenable to letting us do the Town Halls--or it might have been the caffeine from the chocolate that had me all revved up:) And thinking about Mick and Sandye, well on their way to a honeymoon by that time, about Cynthia and Jan who had just gotten married in Norway a few weeks previously, about you and Locke in Austin. . . we had fun that night, didn't we? 

Becky: Indeed. And, as I recall, one of the neighbors had a dog, which made the motley crew even *more* diverse. But lots of good food, good conversation, and people who weren't afraid to get down on the floor to play with dogs and babies. 

Dene: Wallace, my buddy Lee's [Ritchie] dog. I think he went straight for Landon's chocolate face. 

Becky: I think at this point, I hadn't gone beyond thinking "well, we could get a bunch of people together and do a panel..." but make it a high-powered one like the one at C's on rhetoric. Was it John or you who came up with the Town Hall name, which to me invoked the political scenario of fireside chats and, yes, Clinton's attempt at empathizing with the world? But since community was central to this field, I latched on to the idea, and was getting excited about an extended community discussion led by old guard and innovators. Pretty heady stuff, and the stuff that got me excited about this field in the first place. 

Dene: John might have come up with idea of our name. He certainly began developing questions and strategies for design rather quickly. He did a great job on the webpage for us all for the conference. 

Becky: Amen! When you need a job done, John's a great guy to have around. . .   :-) 

Dene: Well, anyway, I sure like the idea of community involvement. Especially involvement with *our* community. I have a special fondness for the CW folk--the first conference paper I ever gave was at Ann Arbor as a graduate student passionate about hypertext. There much have been a million people in the room where I gave my paper. I was scared to death. But afterwards people had very kind things to say to me. It was there that I met Jeff [Galin] and Joanie [Latchaw], two people who have supported my efforts through these years. And Will Hockman was on my panel. I met Michael Joyce there. And I remember seeing you at one of the registration tables. I don't think I could ever forget your long red, wild hair.  :) 

Becky: I remember thinking about how much fun the virtual town halls were when Eric got folks talking about tenure, publishing, and so forth at the Missouri conference, and I couldn't help but think that was the kind of thing--large community involvement, broadcast so folks could lurk if they wished, and led by someone with an idea/vision but not limited to them, and a long, extended, thoughtful exchange of ideas--I thought we should be doing f2f, so why not extend it back to those who couldn't go to the conference (which included me, once I found out I was to give birth a few weeks beforehand!). We were all pretty excited about the topic, and when True sent mail saying he was really interested, we were beside ourselves. As has become the norm in our profession, a lot of the work was carried out over email, but I think fleshing it out f2f in the beginning, then having some time to think about it and re envision, it worked really well. There's something about that immediate, physical excitement that comes from great ideas (and eating chocolate, and rolling around on the floor with dogs and babies...). 

Dene: Well, gotta go. It's getting late, and the chocolate is wearing off and this computer is tired of me collaborating with it tonight. Hugs to you and everyone at the Rickly-Carter homestead. . . 

Becky: Back atcha. [ROFSmiling] This is pretty fun--the electronic version of a chain letter, but using the metaphor more literally, with links and all. . . 

Dene: When do you want to start working on CWC99? 

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