JAN: My position in this conversation will be Biological.. I argue that the forces of competition, connection and collaboration aren't separate or opposites, but rather part of a system. As James Moore argues in The Death of Competition, ....."the future is now and that there is little sense in working on strategic options based on dominance, product superiority, or brand recognition."

I agree with his ideas. I see that the future for distance education/distributed education/open education....is about total system leadership and creating large interconnected webs extending across products, markets and industry boundaries. As a farm girl, raised in a large extended family connected to a Polish family, I've long understood the conference theme at many levels of concreteness and abstraction. Today I am passionately engaged in consortium building with 50 institutions of higher education and many partners. It's a continuation of my life work. Growing up competition at home was at the dinner table and collaboration was when anyone dared attack a sibling. Trust and love have provided the lifelong floor for our family to re-engage in collaborative and competitive connection.

In the ADEC Consortium we understand competition--we understand connection--we understand collaboration, and most importantly we understand trust.