Let Grandpa Blab Some DS106 History

I ain’t no grandpa, but a start point is the DS106 site itself that indeed has a menu item named “History”. When I did tend the web site, I aimed to keep this updated with more or less, likely less, a chronology of thw various classes that used it over time.

Like….

Give UMW credit, the very first DS106 that Jim Groom taught is still a living, breathing web site at https://umwblogs.org/digitalstorytelling/

I got to pair with Martha Burtis for the whacky Summer camp DS106 or camp Magic McGuffin (woah I thought the domain had died).

Then we lost our heads.

In 2013 no one was lined up at UMW to teach a DS106. No teacher! So some open folks banded together for the Headless (not literally) (maybe literally) DS106. This resulted in organizing a generalized Open DS106 course, what I usually used as the starting frame for teaching a section myself.

Then there was the wild wild west DS106 that, well went kind of ghost town, but still wrangled in some creative-pokes (looking at you, Mark). I let the 106tricks.net domain go (it’s now used for something, well, don;t look), but archived it myself at https://bones.cogdogblog.com/106tricks/

Look web heads, this was something that started in 2011, and somehow is still on the web in some form 14 years later at https://ds106.us with FeedWordPress machine that still pulls posts in, closing in 100,000 syndicated blog posts– the meter on the flow page reads 94934 syndicated blog posts since December 2010.

You see kids, there really is a DS106 Syndication Bus, and its wheels still turn every day. It’s not just something Jim Groom blogcasted.

I’ve captured my own pile of DS106 memories, including the online meeting (what was used, was it hangouts) in December 2010 that formed much of the first open online DS106 — this is Spiraling Down Minuscule DS106 History Details.

But truly all the elements so many of us infused into DS106 – distributed blogs aggregated, the assignment bank, the daily create, all seeded things for my work for many years. It’s like some movie, IT came from DS106

The DS106 years fed consulting work I did for Ontario Extend (gone, wayback link), the UDG Agora, Networked Narratives, the YouShow at TRU, and many more that now I am fuzzy brained on. Oh it was also a jagged line from DS106 to SPLOT.

And the DS106 Daily Create marches on every damn day since January 8, 2012 to today.

For more testimonials and flaff, see the collection Transmissions of DS106 Greatness for things like:

Can it be any more #4life that DS106 still has a pulse in 2025? Grandpa DS106 has a few more stories in the bag.

Featured Image: Where’s Grandpa? flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY 2.0) license