Bryan at the UMW Faculty Academy, 2005. Note the aura, even then.

I should have done this Saturday, but Monday will have to do. Thanks, Bryan Alexander, for directing our week of digital literacy at Open Learning ’17. I met Bryan in January, 2004, in San Diego, at a conference of the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, the predecessor organization to the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. I was so inspired by Bryan’s closing talk on mobile learning that I rushed the stage afterward and secured a follow-up conversation at a local burger emporium, where I met yet another Br*an for the first time–a story for another post.

Since that time, I have been very fortunate to know Bryan as a colleague, a mentor, a teacher, and a friend. The moral is clear: be a fanboy–not that I need any encouragement.

Bryan did his work for Open Learning ’17 while doing all the other Paul Bunyan/Dan’l Webster work he does: a reading group, his writing, his ed-futures forum, his consulting, his Future Trends in Technology and Education reporting, his speaking, strenuous home-work in his Vermont redoubt, being a loving and supportive family man, and keeping up with film, music, and various gothic frisson-producing wonderments. How he made time for our Virginia Faculty Collaboratives project is a secret he shares with his clones, but we are all very grateful nonetheless.

Thanks for the week of digital literacy, Bryan. Or, as I have learned the Norwegians say, “thanks for that you are you.”