Thursday 14 July 2016

TMC 2016 Entry -1: Backstory

I’ve been debating making this post for a while. Do I bother? Does it matter? I suppose it can work as an introduction (or reminder) of who I am. Alright, here goes.


In 2013, due to scheduling conflicts, I was faced with a choice: “Twitter Math Camp” or “Con Bravo”. I ended up choosing the former, for the first time. I live blogged the whole thing (that link is the first of 5 posts).

In 2014, I again felt like “Twitter Math Camp” might not be my thing. But I ended up going despite the reservations, and live blogging the whole thing a second time. Then I left the MTBoS.

Yeah, my leaving was a thing that happened. I wanted to focus on my writing, plus as it says in this linked post, “I can’t teach all day, then come home and do more teaching related things online.” I started up my third blog not long after that, writing interactive serial fiction and publishing my time travel story.

In 2015, I was in Germany for the wedding of my cousin, and the logistics of TMC didn’t work out anyway. I went to “Con Bravo” that year. The con reinvigorated me to the point of restarting my second blog, personified math, as a webcomic. Yeah, I’m now running 3 blogs, each currently posting weekly at minimum. I am definitely a writer first, and a teacher second.

So why am I in Minnesota for “Twitter Math Camp 2016”?!

VARIOUS REASONS


5) I did say my departure was unlikely to be permanent, and while I haven’t been back to “Global Math”, I participated in the January Blogging initiative, offered “Nix the Tricks” edits, and have been poking at Twitter to the point of adding MTBoS tagged posts from this blog to Lustomatical’s twitter bot. So am I back? Well...

4) Unlike previous years, I am actually not resuming teaching in September. It’s my year off, which I’ve been blogging about weekly at this index. So maybe this is a good time to get more involved in MTBoS things again? Maybe not? I’ll see.

3) I write. Including recaps. In this case, I’ll write for those who cannot attend. My quality is good enough that I’ve previously had a conference recap tweeted out by Dan Meyer. It makes sense to go somewhere my writing will be useful, even read. (Haven’t decided on a format for this year yet though.)

2) I know a number of the people at TMC. It will be nice to see some of them again, and I’m hoping that, having some experience, I can help to bridge new people in too. Though I don’t know if my mentoring was that great in January. -.-

I also personify annoying airlines. Today
Airca was always delayed, but at least she
doesn't lose luggage like American Airlines.
1) I am the outlier. I said that before TMC13. I have an archaic phone. I do weird stuff like draw personified math as a webcomic every week. I plan to talk about song parodies during a “My Favourite” this year. Will such qualities will be a useful thing to bring to the table? If not useful, at least entertaining? To paraphrase Sheri Walker, ‘A data set is more interesting when it includes an outlier.’

So, I’m going. We’ll see what comes of it. If nothing else, hopefully you’ll be informed. As a starter, according to the flight enRoute magazine, “The cloud cover density at any given location is measured in oktas, or eighths of the sky covered in cloud.” (Denoted SKC, FEW, SCT, BKN, OVC). Why eighths? Don’t know. Let me know if you find out first.

You can also read my more recent post about the cubic formula.

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