It was an honour to be among the ICDE Board of Trustees and Executive Committee members who shared these short video greetings to celebrate the new ICDE offices in Oslo. The videos were shared with delegates at the Inspiration webinar April 26, 2017. See the video at https://vimeo.com/215012646

1. Dear Colleagues
I congratulate the Secretariat with new
offices in Oslo.
As a Norwegian, I am proud that we have
hosted the secretariat since ICDE arranged
its 50th anniversary conference in Oslo.
This 1988 conference was important for ICDE
and for me.

2. It was my first ICDE conference and a huge
inspiration.
The Norwegian King Olav was present and Prime
Minister Gro Harlem Bruntland gave the Broady
Lecture.
She announced that the government would
provide baseline funding for a permanent ICDE
secretariat in Norway.
Her pledge has benefited ICDE for three decades.

3. It is 30 years since I taught Norway’s first online course.
The Oslo conference was the first major conference
where Torstein Rekkedal and I presented our
experiences with the EKKO system. An LMS we
developed especially for online teaching.
At the conference, I realized that online education would
change international distance education for ever.
Paulsen, M. F. & Rekkedal: Computer conferencing - A breakthrough in distance
learning, or just another technological gadget? In: Sewart, D. & Daniel, J. S.
(eds.): Developing Distance Education - Papers to the 14th World Conference in
Oslo 9-16 August 1988, pp. 362-365. Oslo: ICDE.

4. So again,
thank you to ICDE
for helping and inspiring me
and all members who
make distance education better
and more available
for millions of students
around the world!