I’m back from my whirlwind visit to Odense in Denmark, where I was invited to speak at the KnowledgeLab‘s E-portfolio & Talent Management conference. I’d once again like to thank Niels and the team for a really though-provoking, well-organised event.

Of course, I got to explain Dave and my vision for the Learning Landscape, as well as spend a couple of hours taking people through the features of Elgg on a more or less one-on-one basis. As I understand it the slides I used, as well as a video interview, will show up on the conference website soon.

Something I mentioned during my talk, and I know Dave has mentioned in similar talks, is the question of ownership. Even if an institution doesn’t explicitly own a user’s portfolio, if they’re defining the questions that have to be answered – in other words, if the institution controls the data – then they have implicit ownership. The user still isn’t free to define his or her portfolio, and therefore his or her digital identity. What we’re hoping to do with Elgg and the Learning Landscape is to give the user that full control, and after my interview that was put brilliantly to me: while most e-portfolios prompt the learner to provide answers to questions, the Learning Landscape prompts them to find more questions.

Conversations are what this is all about. On behalf of the Elgg team – Dave, Alison and myself – I’d like to welcome our new users who have joined because of that event and others; please don’t feel shy to ask questions and make comments, both on your weblogs and on ours. You may find the video tutorials (click “home”) useful for the basics – for everything else, there’s the Elgg Features community, which you can join by clicking the little “plus person” icon – – next to its name.