I’ve been watching the flow of content coming out of Illinois, and it’s obvious we have officially jumped the shark (my bad use of phrase) reached a tipping point in terms of distributing ideas once held only in ballroom walls to the rest of the world. Wondering what future conference organizer is gonna get smart and only allow attendees who:
- Have their own Ustream channels and broadcast live facial reactions of attendees as the session is in progress
- Can Tweet out the best quotes, engage in lively back channel repartee, and live blog the session to their own sites at the same time
- Create a VoiceThread story of the presentation within 10 minutes of finish by incorporating photos taken during the session and uploaded to Flickr, adding voice over narration to contextualize the event, and soliciting video comments from virtual attendees
- Put together a wiki page for the session that collects dozens of various RSS feeds compiled from keyword and tag searches on the presenter’s name, the general topic, del.icio.us bookmarks, YouTube videos and more
- Create a Google Map that identifies where all of the virtual attendees live and helps them upload photos of themselves watching the UStreamed, Tweeted, VoiceThreaded, wikied presentation in progress.
- Conduct a live Skype call with other experts who challenge the ideas being presented and scream out provocative and borderline insulting questions
- Have their own conference space in Second Life where live video and audio of presentation is being streamed and where they have organized a post session social featuring virtual local microbrews and coffees
What am I missing?
(Photo “Multi Monitor Mahem” by totalAido.)
Technorati Tags: confernces, multitasking
My gut reaction to the “…Wondering what future conference organizer is gonna get smart and only allow attendees who…” premise you kicked this post off with:
Alan November.
With one giant “IF”:
“IF” he manages to figure out how to build in a profit-factor given that a conference such as his annual/summer Building Learning Communities event(s) is prime territory for this to happen anyways…and would be an ideal test-lab if he embraced it.
I know he’s going to add a virtual component for Summer 08, but I’m not sure — based on what I saw last summer — that he’s ready to open the doors as wide as his attendees already are (whether he’s aware or not).
As for the other big national ed-tech shows?
Nah.
Not gonna happen. To many ‘partnering’ issues…and the accountants will not want to crack open this door without obvious ROI nailed down ahead of time. Obviously this doesn’t prevent the back-channel participant open-sourcing the show without Apple or Adobe underwriting it…but that still doesn’t answer Will’s question.
Which leaves me still confident that Alan November is the only ‘big show’ that ‘could’…
…and EduCon 2.0 (and related off-shoots in years to come) as the only one that ‘will’.
Christian…
Your comments makes me sorry that I have to make a choice between NECC and BLC as my summer PD. Next year, may need to reconsider.
I don’t know whether we need to require folks to do as Will suggests but BOY does it make a difference when you can actually show authentic examples of the tools in practice.
I just got back from Northern Voice (where I had the pleasure of meeting D’Arcy (who responds earlier in this thread)) — the type of back-channel conversations Will describes were par for the course, and actually added a great layer to the conversations occurring in Meatspace.
Examples like NV and Educon2.0 really leave me wondering if I’ll ever go to another NECC/November-esque conference again. The power of those conferences (for me, anyways) is in the conversations that occur outside sessions, as oppose to the scripted sessions that make up the actual conference.
And given the onslaught of ISTE spam I’ve been receiving over the last few weeks (seriously — ISTE — give it a rest — I know the URL of your webinar page, and I’ll go there myself if I’m interested, thank you) I’m wondering how much the ISTE folks get it. Seriously — aggressive email marketing in 2008? Get a blog. Really.
I would love to see any of the major conferences embrace more openness, but I don’t think any of them will. As long as people continue to pony up money to attend, there is no incentive to change. These conferences thrive on the buzz around their content. Opening up the actual sessions to allow non-paying people to participate doesn’t give them any ROI. And I get the distinct sense that the people making the final decisions about how these conferences are run are petrified about the consequences of this openness, as they believe that the content is the most valuable thing they offer. In reality, the content is secondary at best; the relationships that arise among attendees is the thing of primary importance.
I’d love to be wrong, and I’d love to see any major conference allow open participation, but I’m not holding my breath. Change will occur when the current conference model is no longer profitable. Until then, things will remain the same.
Haha, it’s getting there, man, and getting there fast. I’m about talked out by sharing the OLPC and our four “buy two get one” XOs with all 20 of my K-4 classes this week, so it has been good for me to take the occasional Twitter or ustream.tv break and take in a session or to, or engage in the backchat.
I am soooo grateful for these opportunities, since I really only get to attend one or two conferences each year in the flesh, the main one being NECC. I recall David Warlick commenting to me that during his NECC pressie last year he thought the audience was holding up Macbooks like lighters and candles at a rock concert until he realized they were just raising them in the air, snagging video in Skype, Skyping out to colleagues.
Wow. How much fun is this!? No, wait, never admit that 🙂 Can anyone ever learn too much?
My greatest fear…BeckettsDad is right.
The big gun conferences are driven by marketing, partnerships, and LOTS of money.
I figure the only way it will happen is when the Will Richardson’s of keynotes and spotlight sessions go in demanding it. So get with it Will. Make some demands so the little poor people who cannot afford BLC, NECC, IL-TCE, CUE, TCEA, Shanghai, and all the other conferences I’d love to attend but cant afford me a better opportunity to participate.
Until then I must be satisfied with the crumbs of information I get from the chats, skypes, ustreams, and tweets that come out from them.
And not just you, Will–there are many other big ticket names who draw the crowds. You know who you are. Money makes it seem so…dirty and political doesn’t it?
This is so true. I just got home from ICE. I was late to the conference because I got caught up in a Chatzy session held during one of the presentations that ended up morphing into a global conversation about something completely different.
When I got to ICE I actually spent more time in Twitter and jumping UStream vid’s and Chatzy conversations. I don’t know how many times a presenters comment would generate conversation among people across continents.
Next time I present the conversation in these tools should be part of the presentation. To project a chat room, twitter dialog, have Skype callers, google jockey’s from anywhere, ustream participants all enhance rather than detract.
Reggie
So Reggie, two questions if you are following this thread. First, how does it affect the whole idea of attending the conference? Second, how much is too much, do you think?
Thanks for the comment.
Will
My knee-jerk reaction is to say I was actually reluctant to attend this morning as I had to cut short my twitter/chat conversation to go. Some of those in the conversation ended up being at ICE, but not all.
For those who consume the electronic conversation, the focus is direct and specific to topic. As a consumer, I can focus my interest, virtually organize or attend a conference of ideas through Twitter/Chatzy etc.
As a consumer when I walked into ICE there were few presentations that spoke directly to me and my interests (at least on the day I could go).
I’m not saying I don’t like conferences, but over the past few months I personally have got more from virtual conferences- and had a dialog that few could offer.
How much is too much? I guess I’d say when the message isn’t clear anymore. As a presenter what’s to objective and what kind of dialog is appropriate for your message?
So that’s what I’ve been thinking. How much back channel is good and how much of all this stuff going on is bad in terms of people getting the ideas and thinking about the message. Do you just do it if you can manage it? I mean, as a presenter, I keep wondering what’s going on in the chat! Today as I was watching Jakes in UStream and he was getting updates from someone in the room as to what people were saying in the chat. Had to be disruptive.
I can see where it’s disruptive. It depends on the learning environment you’re trying to create. If it’s just sit and git, then it is disruptive. And BTW, sit and git isn’t all bad and like attending a concert of someone you like, it’s great to hear it live.
The format you choose is key to which interactions you want. The offering of simple things like Ustreaming doesn’t have be included in the live portion. It’s simply a courtesy and I’ve used it with the understanding that I won’t be able to interact and they are on their own. It’s not necessary to bring them in. However, if well designed, that could work.
As for the economics of this, I think it only helps to expose a conference as one that you may want to attend. It can be a great marketing tool.
Have every conference convener read Naked Conversations. (I wonder if this comment gets blocked because of that word ;-))
I watched this play out yesterday in Steve Hargadon’s session. Within the first 10 minutes of 45, he had encouraged Tweeting and shared the password for the back-channel and invited the room into a Google Doc. I’m familiar with all of these (admittedly more practiced after this conference, though) and found myself trying to do all 3 at once so I wouldn’t miss a thing. I’m fairly ADD, so multitasking is essential for me anway…
Funny thing is, Steve would ask a question of the group. Nothing hugely esoteric. Just something like, “And what characteristics of good staff development did this video of Open PD demonstrate?” Silence. He’d rephrase, and be met again with silence. These were bright people out there in the audience, but they were otherwise engaged and not participating in the conversation with him. Afterwards I shared with him that it reminded me of the first time I taught teachers to use Inspiration, and that “Aha!” moment that I had to remind them that when their students first use it, they’ll do the same thing and ignore the teacher’s line of questioning until they have gotten their screen to look just like the teacher’s first example.
So I guess my answer, from that experience, is that it’s too much when your audience is no longer responding to YOU, only to each other. I mean, yes, there is MUCH to be gained from that dialog, but they came to see YOU.
BTW, I missed Mitch Reznick’s keynote for another reason, and jumped on Twitter. Followed the tweets to the back-channel and from there to the Ustream and… well, you get the idea. I should have just gone to the keynote in person, because I wasn’t accomplishing the other task I was supposed to be doing at the time anyway.
Looking forward to seeing you in Tinley Park…
That sounds awfully exclusionary. Not everyone is comfortable doing that kind of on-the-fly media publishing – and if even 1 person per session is doing it, the rest are redundant and distracting anyway. I’d rather be at a conference that modeled openness and diversity, rather than enforcing a particular style of participation.
Whoa! I wasn’t serious! I was trying to take a light swap at the “new conference model” here. Not in any way suggesting there should be a prerequisite for attending conferences. Sorry if that wasn’t obvious!
@will: sorry- I didn’t read the tongue-in-cheek in that post. I didn’t really think _you_ would be exclusionary!
Hmmm. Didn’t intend it to be prescriptive, enforcing nor “exclusionary”. Anyone can choose, as I did at one point, to just stop following the other conversations and focus solely on the presenter, returning to the other dialogs when I chose. We practice differentiation best when we model it in our own staff development. Some were comfortable with the plethora of input but others were not. What was most interesting to me was that the presenter seemed at least a little surprised/concerned by the lack of verbal response he was getting at that point; for him, at that point, perhaps, the array of other venues interfered with the dialog he was trying to have with the attendees.
@Kymberli: I wasn’t referring to your comment. I was referring to the line “Wondering what future conference organizer is gonna get smart and only allow attendees who” in the original post – that is a bit exclusionary, in that it only invites attendees that conform to a specific description of participation.
@Darcy: Whew! I rarely post comments on the pages of the “greats” like Will. Thought I’d gotten into a tough crowd, but… hey. Thanks for clearing THAT up.
Kimberli…thanks for that. Keep commenting!
What you are missing is moving past the obvious and what others are doing. What you are missing is the originality, the going past the tools to the soul. What you are missing is all this kum-ba-ya goodness that is as transparent as air
We have enough self promoters to sink the titanic.
We have enough sloganism to cover my 1998 Pontiac Le Mans 3 times over.
What we need is a revolution.
I’ve got the plans and am gearing it up.
Wow…some nice conversation here on the blog! The other day I was watching Dean Shareski’s ustream preso (he was in Canada, I was in Pennsylvania). It is very cool being able to take advantage of this type of learning that was not available even a year or so ago.
While your post was obviously tongue in cheek (maybe not obvious enough to some), I think that the backchannel chats are a valuable part of the presentations. I think it is good to ask questions of the speaker and have a conversation as the conversation is taking place. Obviously in a room, you can’t shout out a question to the presenter, and it is rather disruptive constantly chatting with folks sitting around you. I don’t think this type of conversation is disruptive (or disrespectful) to the presenter.
All of the folks in the physical room and in the online room are there for the same purpose. Surely the focus of the presenation is what caused them to arrive to that “room.” Through these back channels and live blogs, we are able to engage in the conversation. I wouldn’t have gotten in so much trouble in high school for chatting with my neighbors if I were able to back channel there 🙂
In the end, we are at a much greater advantage now that we have the ability to watch and interact with a conference without having to go…if we can multi-task while doing, well, even better!
Brad, you make a GREAT point. The back-channeling is effective if the presenter projects it on the screen or — at the very least — checks it periodically throughout the presentation for key topics that the group is honing in on.
In the case I described, the presenter’s disclaimer stated that he would not read the comments until after the presentation. I wholly understand this, but the best use of the tool might involve checking the back-channel at least a couple of times throughout the presentation… an amped-up version of checking for understanding, morphed into a checking for what your audience really wants.
Of course, this requires GREAT confidence in your field as a presenter, or at the very least, an ability to relinquish the microphone to the audience, some of whom may have incredibly greater answers to the floor questions being posed.
I can certainly see that there would be times when, as a presenter, the back-channel detracts from your presentation and efforts. I’ve said that sometimes teachers can be the worst students.
However I’ve also been presenting material to groups that, for whatever reason, just aren’t engaged. Often I think they’re not engaged because they don’t ‘get’ the conversation. That might be my fault as a presenter, but if the back-channel was incorporated, that conversation might compliment, build or kick-start the conversation.
I don’t know how many times during one of my teacher inservice that a single question from one of my higher performing teachers guided the conversation.
I think that when appropriate, the back-channel gives the conversation a dynamic that a room full of sometimes tentative audience might not.
Great point Reggie…
If the presenter checks OR if there is someone in the room designated to pass information on, having a back channel is a great way to drive interaction. The BIGGEST problem is that so many folks are conditioned (like Pavlov’s dogs) to sit and passively take in information…If we want to change how we are presenting information to the kids we teach we need to start this practice as adult learners as well 😉
I know that I’ve doing a lot of presenting in Elluminate as a part of the PLP work and watching the backchannel chat in there is hard enough. I haven’t yet made this a part of my keynotes or presentations, but I may have to soon just to see what it feels like. Interesting thinking…
Isn’t it somewhat ironic that this discussion amongst people who are committed to changing the way teaching traditionally occurs are themselves challenged with the techniques, tools and network that they champion (myself included)?
Lots of interesting dialogue going on here. As both a presenter and a participant I have mixed feelings about the backchannel phenomena. Just as teaching face2face is totally different from teaching virtual, so to, I believe, is presenting face2face and presenting w/ the added backchannel component (whichever application you might care to use).
But here is what REALLY concerns me, and should concern a lot of us…If the ability to ustream and twitter and chatzy, etc is available to all of us who are unable to attend a conference, what would prevent our administrators and school business officers from saying, ‘Why should we PAY for a conference — registration, travel, hotel, substitute, etc.’ when you can get the same information on YOUR time (via archived ustreams or wikis where people can edit the information, etc.). With the layoffs and cut-backs in education no longer on the horizon, but very much here, I can already hear ‘DENIED, DENIED, DENIED’ being said to conference requests.
Your thoughts?
Thanks for the comment, Nancy. First, I don’t think meeting face to face will diminish in its importance as a professional development mode. What you do in that face to face time is going to have to change, I would think. Second, I think it’s going to be a pretty long time before school boards and admins are going to be suggesting this type of learning as an alternative. The Denied requests are going to come from failed budgets more than anything else.
I wasn’t meaning to imply that a backchannel isn’t valuable – I’m a firm believer. During a closing keynote session I did with Stephen Downes and Brian Lamb, we had an anonymizing web-based chat channel up on the big screen for the duration. We were walking the room with microphones to help bring attendees into the conversation, Donahue style, but many people who weren’t comfortable standing to speak were able to participate safely through the backchannel. It also allowed a few people to participate remotely.
My concern was only with requiring a specific form of participation. Even those who appear to be silent and unengaged may be actively thinking about the session and internally making links and connections. Sometimes that isn’t made visible until much later, but those people would be left out if a conference required “Type A” web 2.0 live publishing.
My own conference style has changed dramatically through the years – I started out being a prolific liveblogger, then a recapper, and now I only take occasional notes in my moleskine, preferring to take advantage of the face-to-face time for discussion. To each their own.
I had breakfast this morning with an old buddy who heads up staff dev for a very large district. Told her a bit about IL-TCE and then found myself recapping this blog. Her jaw dropped (and stayed that way) for a while. She really had a hard time envisioning this, especially the part about the presenter checking back-channeling periodically while presenting. Maybe it would be more doable if, as Kristin suggested, there was a designated person in the room to give the speaker feedback. (Thought of the term “designated reporter” and cringed….) In fact, it’s precisely BECAUSE I would want someone in my audience to do that for me, I assumed that another presenter would want someone to do it for him. I was not “designated” so maybe the presenter didn’t appreciate it. I doubt it, though, because he quickly swung the discussion to the topic I mentioned was being back-channelled.
At any rate, this discussion has made me think a great deal more about my own preferences as a presenter, and how those apparently impact my behavior as a participant. I probably shouldn’t assume that all presenters feel the way I do. Epiphany…
Will, what a great conversation starter. I’ve learned so much reading comments and wanting to shout out my own comments. This is about transparency to me. This is about disruptive technologies and disruptive learning. This is no long about the one correct way to present or attend a conference for that matter. This is about collective/collaborative learning and sharing. Thanks to all of you for being part of my network.
Cheryl, sitting in the mountain house getting ready to go skiing.
I felt that this was an interesting blog because of the relevance it has for our class. We have been using a class wiki consistently throughout the semester. Everyone had to sign up for delicious and have watched some videos/speeches on youtube. We also have registered for Skype and use it to contact with students outside of class. I know I have found this technology very helpful to my classmates and myself. The wiki gives us easy control on how to communicate with our peers for our group project. Using Skype is a lot different than the wiki. Skype is almost like an instant message program, like your basic msn or aim, but with an option to talk over the internet with anyone around the world. With technology growing and growing these days, I am sure these programs with change and adapt to be even more productive in time. I definitely think conferences will be a lot easier to conduct in the future. Even now with using Skype, multiple people can be on the internet at the same time all communicating together. With the use of webcams, you can even see everyone when conducting conference meetings. I am sure this technology will make its way into high schools and elementary schools around the country.
Fascinating discussion here, I think it is interesting for all of us to remember that as educators thinking about the human dynamics of classrooms of the past, present & future “back-channel” communication is constantly happening too…(whether it involves technology or not)
I think the key to effective learning in any “educational setting” is to have people so interested & engaged in what they are doing that even seemingly simple verbal “back-channel” communication amongst those people is actually a WONDERFUL thing, because those involved are engaged in critical thinking & sharing those ideas! Personally I learn gain as much useful information from meeting new people & having seemingly short conversations during attendance at conferences as I do in the formal sessions!
Isn’t it interesting that we as “professionals” in a room at a conference do essentially the same thing the kids do?