This is part 10 of the Travels with Terence series, following our digital projects editor on his pilot press in-person training program. Last week Terence was in Seattle, Washington, meeting with groups from the University of Washington Press and Libraries. Due to Washington’s interest in Manifold as a tool for Open Educational Resources (OER), and more generally for classroom use, Terence was joined by Krystyna Michael, Open Educational Technologist at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

The University of Washington team, spearheaded by Beth Fuget at the press and Elliott Stevens, Verletta Kern, and Liz Bedford from the library side, welcomed Terence and Krystyna for a few days of meetings.

After landing on Monday, Terence and Krystyna had a whirlwind tour of the press (with homemade scones) where they ran a quick demo of Manifold for Press Director Nicole Mitchell and the bulk of the editorial team. They then made for the library where they introduced Manifold’s main features before discussing how to structure projects, curate content, map project development, and work with authors from teaching and publishing perspectives. They finished (amid cookies) with a close review of the development roadmap, an exploration of how other institutions are using Manifold, and how Manifold is situated against other players in the community.

A theme that emerged from those discussions is how, rather than a centralized system that dictates its use, Manifold is a flexible tool that individual institutions can—and are expected to—make their own. At the same time, Manifold fosters a community for the institutions and individuals who use it to rely upon and with whom to explore questions collaboratively.

Tuesday opened with a refresher introduction for those unable to attend Monday, before progressing into sessions focusing on how Manifold is already being used in the classroom, both at CUNY and Washington. Terence noted that “those sessions were the highlight of the trip for me. It was utterly invaluable to have Krystyna there in person leading those discussions and talking about her experiences using Manifold as a pedagogical tool and speaking to the privacy and legal questions and constructs that come up around such use. And to then have an instructor from Washington come up with his students and share their experiences using the platform to enable their scholarship—it was really powerful and inspiring. I felt it, and I’m certain Matt did too,” referring to Matt Gold, Manifold’s co-PI who remoted in from New York to speak alongside Krystyna.

And if that wasn’t already a big day, Terence and Krystyna finished off with a three-plus-hour tour of how to push Manifold to its limits without cracking open the command line interface (CLI). “We left any talk of the CLI to Zach on Wednesday,” Terence said, speaking of Manifold’s lead developer, Zach Davis, who led a remote session from Cast Iron Coding’s Portland offices on Wednesday, digging deep into the underlying structure and architecture of the system while also tackling important questions about accessibility. Ahead of these training sessions, Washington’s Accessibility Office did a thorough review of Manifold and provided nuanced notes to help expand on the work Zach’s team had done in this area last summer. Enabling Manifold to be as accessible as possible is a core tenet of Manifold’s ongoing development plans, so it was quite the coup to receive expert advice from Washington’s office, which regularly works with clients like Microsoft and Google.

Closing out the trip, Terence commented,

I’m so glad Washington is a part of the Manifold community. Their passion and enthusiasm are so striking, and I can’t thank Beth, Elliott, Verletta, and Liz enough for arranging such an amazing schedule, including impromptu tours of the beautiful campus, delicious Mexican food, and of course fish and chips.

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• Miles Travelled: 2,780
• New offshoot series: Trekking with Krystyna
• Dining Notes: More fish and chips!!!   Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out on the community Slack channel, tweet us at @manifoldscholar, and follow along with development on Github.