In the fast-changing landscape of learning, technology and society in general,  #EDEN15 – 2015 EDEN Annual Conference, has welcomed over 380 delegates from 45 countries to the beautiful city of Barcelona, to explore the expansion of learning scenarios driven by Open Education Practices, massive online formats, learning networks, automated processes and learning analytics.

The event, hosted by EDEN founding member UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) combined the celebration of the host organisation’s 20^th anniversary with preparations for EDEN’s 25^th anniversary next year.

Among the many themes addressed have been networked learning in open practices, open education in all its forms, leadership, change management and strategic thinking. As was pointed out in the power trio keynote conversation between Belinda Tynan Pro-Vice Chancellor, The Open University, UK, Marci Powell, Chair Emerita and Past President, USDLA and Darcy Hardy Associate Vice President, Enterprise Consulting, Blackboard: no vision ? no strategy ? no change. This echoes the opening keynote by Xavier Prats Monné, Director-General for Education and Culture of the European Commission, who encouraged us to think of another kind of education, saying that ?the real challenge is innovation in public administration!?

The EDEN Annual conference is much more than just a large conference. It is an annual meeting of a dynamic community. As such it strives to offer a lively, stimulating and much interactive forum, with participants engaged in a variety of session formats, from presentations and workshops to speed dating and synergy sessions, the latter two focussing on networking opportunities and practice exchange. Over 220 additional experts and practitioners from all over the world followed the plenary sessions online, via a live video stream. Social media was particularly active this year, with the conference hashtag #EDEN15 generating over 1400 tweets on the first day of the conference alone, which also saw the official EDEN Twitter account cracking the 1000 Followers barrier.

Among the associated events organised around the main conference was the International Editors’ Workshop In Educational Technology Journals, the first ever summit of electronic journals on ICT enhanced learning.

EDEN has been running its Fellows recognition scheme for over ten years now, and this year introduced two new schemes, the Young Scholars Award and the Best Practice Initiative.

Senior Fellowships were awarded to:

Alan Bruce, Universal Learning Systems, Ireland

Terry Anderson, Athabasca University, Canada

Albert Sangra, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain

Roberto Carneiro, former Minister of Education, Portugal

Fellows Awards were presented to:

Helga Dorner, Central European University, Hungary

Timothy Read, UNED, Spain

Yacoov Katz, Professor Emeritus, President, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Irina Smirnova, MESI, Russia

Margarida Carmo, Universidade Aberta, Portugal

Ene Koitla, Estonian e-Learning Development Centre, Information Technology Foundation for Education, Estonia

The first Young Scholar Awards were given to:

Daniel Puntis, Newcastle University, UK and Lina Xue, KU Leuven, Belgium.

The new Best Practice Initiative Award and the Best Research Paper went to:

Hanne Voldborg Andersen and Elsebeth Korsgaard Sorensen, Aalborg University, Denmark,

for the same paper, a true sign of the quality of their work and the vital links between research and practice.

Videos, photos, presentations and resources

The 2015 EDEN Annual Conference – #EDEN15 was rich in content and discussions, which also raised attention on several media channels. We collected some of the most popular resources here:

• Media, interviews, press and more collected: Resources of #EDEN15
• The conference through the participants’ lense: 0 Day Storified | 1st Day Storified | 2nd Day Storified | 3rd Day Storified
• Keynote presentations available on Slideshare
• Video Stream, media resources and Graphic capture of keynote speeches are available here.
• Videos with Keynote interviews, Press releases and more resources
• Plenary sessions on the EDEN Youtube Channel.
• Book of Abstracts is downloadable
• Picture Gallery on Google+.
• Interviews by UOC

Preparations are already underway for EDEN?s 25th anniversary conference to be held in Budapest, Hungary, June 14th-17th 2016. In the meantime, members of the community get together in Athens, Greece, for the EDEN Open Classroom event in the form of the Open Discovery Space Conference: Transforming schools into innovative learning organisations18-21 September 2015, and 1st D4Learning International Conference : Innovations with Digital Learning for Inclusion (D4L), November 17th-20th 2015, Aalborg, Denmark.