I’m running on afternoon fumes and a double espresso at the new home of Duke University’s Learning Innovation (DLI) team. The laughter from across cube pods suggests I’m not the only one feeling punchy.

DLI is hosting us for a Harvesting Academic Innovation for Learners (HAIL Storm) writing retreat and peer learning sessions. The days are largely un-programmed with large blocks of time for writing, meals together, and a few lighting talks and office hours around the meal times.

I have a list of writing projects from the practical – workflow processes, project intake frameworks – to the aspirational – session proposals – to the exploratory – faculty learning innovation competencies. The later is a collaborative blog piece I’m writing with a colleague. It started as a conversation about a month ago and blossomed into, “Hey, we should write about this and wouldn’t it be great to have a specific piece to focus on at the HAIL writing retreat.”

We had a productive first day, drafting our process, scoping our piece, drafting questions for colleagues, and circulating that survey for input. We hope to use this retreat as a way to have collective input on ideas while protecting everyone’s time for their own projects. We’re not going to design think this one, we’re just going to think it. And write it.