I think it was really fitting that post lockdown the first physical gathering of the international #OER clan was in Inverness. It was so good just to see everyone who could make it along in person. I am going to do two posts this first one on the conference experience and my highlights and a second post specifically around Open Scotland #OpenScot

Tuesday afternoon the clan gathered - we ran a successful plenary on Open Scotland -more in next post and then gathered in Hootenanny in Inverness .

I worked out that time is indeed different in Inverness , just like West Highlands - 10 minute walks were more like 25 minutes. We had blue skies !

#OER23  was hosted by @ThinkUHI  in Inverness and supported by  @A_L_T big thanks to 
CEO @MarenDeepwell  and UHI's @smythkrs and his team  for making event so energising and such a great advert for UHI and Inverness. I think this was UHI Inverness' first International conference.

Sign of great conference - every session I attended was superb and yet I still wanted to be in another room as I knew I was missing another excellent session elsewhere. You just can't be two  places at once Twitter and Mastadon streams are still worth following.

Key takeaways 
Two great keynotes and  links to sessions I attended below - 
Open is still really only in pockets across the UK and very institutionally led - but many institutions still lacking policy or impetus to open up learning content. 
That Centres who have Blackboard Ultra have lost ability to open up content and are looking for solutions ( time for us to start using Canvas' ability to share courses openly) 
Netherlands who had large group over from SURF are ahead in having national strategies and repository in place around open education. 
There are some amazing technological advances.  Re-Claim hosting is doing amazing things with 'containerisation' and the ability to build and deliver whole stand alone systems in the cloud. 
Teachmeet and ScotEdublogs and projects from earlier in century championed as open practice. Was reflecting at #Bett with colleagues that many folks from this period have either retired or left Scottish Education and hard to see the next generation of open practitioners in Scottish School or College sectors.  
Some great initiatives around world here Penn State University packs for supporting academics to work in open.
There is an ongoing discussion and action around open practice in UK and global universities that is still not happening in Schools and Colleges. 
Good to see another European project drawing threads of #oer practice together - I miss the #OERWorldMap 
Not sure how open but in terms of AR/VR Hyrdra Centre caught my eye. 
We've still away to go to get everyone on the open bus and playing nicely together - every institution should have an #Oerconference - How do we follow UNESCO guidance ? How do we shine our learning and resources out into the wider community ? 
Good to see blogging featuring as means for practitioners to share again !

A shout out to all who made this a great conference - can't tag you all but you all made it great , a special shout out to the #femedtech folks -  and Tom Farrelly  for great  Gasta and for Long Way to the Top. 
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As ever I picked up some great leads for College business which I will follow up on in next couple of weeks.

This post is aimed at the #oer crowd and everyone else who still needs to discover open educational resources and a place for them in their own open practice. I'll start with UNESCO definition that government and institutions should be sharing any publicly funded educational resources.

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