Monday, July 28th, 2008...July 28, 2008
Back channel is powerful
I have noticed a trend over the last year at many conferences. The only discussion being had is not that of the speaker on stage. But that of the attending and following along online audience as well. This isn’t an entirely new revelation people have been live blogging and irc channels for years. But not with the addition of tools such as twitter, ustream and a few others; there is a timely back channel going on discussing the positive and negative points of the talks.
Eduweb 2008
This year at eduWeb there was a solid twitter back channel. The discussion was aggregated with the hashtag #eduweb2008. I, while not an attendee was able to follow most every session at the conference from my office. I was even able to interject some questions at the conference from my remote location. I had my questions relayed via twitter. Ustream was another very helpful service that was used to stream live video of conference sessions.
Now as the organizer people might think, oh no bad idea. Wrong, this was able to get more buzz out about this conference that probably ever before. It made it relevant to more than just the attendees and the buzz can be carried on from here.
SXSW vs Lacy
One of the best examples of back channel rebellion is that of SXSW v Sarah Lacy when she was doing a live keynote interview of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg. She lost trust of the audience and boy did things go south. If you want to read more about this just google sxsw and sarah lacy.
Tools of the back channel
There are many tools that can be used to create back channel at a conference; they can all work in unison to create the big picture.
- Twitter
a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. - Twitter search
this is the search tool used for the twitter service, it can be used to search real time via #hashtags, usernames, keywords, location and date among others - Ustream
a real time free live video streaming site, where you can view conference sessions live, it also has a chatroom so you can add to the discussion while the session is going on - Meebo rooms
Chat rooms with a theme via the Meebo browser based instant messenger service - Flickr
as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, tell the story of the conference via pictures
Call to action – HighEdWeb 2008
So now that we have all these tools and a proven model from eduweb 2008. I think we need to improve on this. This is where you come in. If you plan too attend or not you can participate in the back channel at HighEdWeb2008.
Here are a few ideas I had for how to add to what was done at eduWeb.
- Audience ombudsman
A person or many in the audience of every session (just anyone ,no nomination needed) that will monitor the back channel of a session and ask the questions of those who are following via twitter or ustream. - Central hub
A place where all the back channel can be monitored at the conference, for example as screen in the lobby that will display all the tweets with #highedweb2008 live. There is a tool called twittercamp that can accomplish this. I’m sure with all the geeks attending we can find other way to accomplish this as well. Or create our own tool if needed. - Ustream the sessions
As was done during many of the sessions at eduweb 2008. I think people should stream the sessions this year to provide coverage for those who are not able to attend and another vehicle for back channel.
Let me know your thoughts and lets get moving before HighEdWeb 2008!
17 Comments
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
Matt – In case you didn’t see this from Jeffrey Veen:
http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000996.html
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
re: hashtag – @jcollier suggested using #heweb08
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23heweb08
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
Matt, this is a great idea. I think having a big screen in the lobby showing live tweets would be a big draw and would draw a lot of attention to the back channel. It would also draw a lot more users to Twitter.
I also think the conference should uStream every session.
I know with #eduWeb2008 that I was able to follow the conference pretty well via uStream and Twitter even though I was 3000 miles away.
That was awesome, but it made me REALLY wish I was there.
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
Echo Tony’s comment above. I felt like I could follow the conference & participate even though I (obviously) wasn’t there. Your compilation of links & resources helped a lot also, thank you!
The discussion on ustream during streaming of presentations was also good.
Also +1 to the shorter hash tag #heweb08
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
I like the ombudsman approach outlined in Veen’s post, although it’s harder to pull off for non-panel sessions and at “smaller” conferences.
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
Patrick – Yeah that is why I mentioned the random person as ombudsmen. I mean anyone can do it, just as long as it gets asked. I was able to have Brad ask mine for me at eduWeb.
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
Funny… of the people that commented only Mark was actually at this conference. I’ll be honest even being there and the MASS of content being created is quite overloading. I completely agree it was a hell of an experience to be a part of, but twittering, following the channel, ustreaming, and general online discussion did cause a lot of focus to be taken off of actually focusing on the presentation at hand.
I’m not saying it can’t be cool, but am just warning… be careful what you wish for…
Also I think I’m getting to the point where following to many people on twitter begins to be a distraction.
Do you want the focus of the conference to be collaboration and listening to well thought through and presented discussions or the noise that blots out this? Really think through these things before saying all hands on deck…
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
Kyle – You realize the eduweb back channel was tiny in comparison to that of other conferences. There were probably 30 people tops compared to SXSW which has thousands and has been manageable. An attempt to follow it all will definately lead to overload. As will an attempt to follow to much of anything. It was very valuable at SXSW so I think that is kind of being shortsighted higher ed conferences are not that large. You have to find that always hard to define signal vs noise ratio.
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
I definitely realize that, I’m simply playing devil’s advocate to make sure the approach is well “funneled”, “aggregated” or however you want to define it so it doesn’t become tons of noise and people get frustrated with it.
As we create more and more content semantics and meta data become more and more important… you know this, but making sure all that is well defined and understood is the challenge.
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
Kyle – definately web 2.o made lots of stuff web 3.0 goal, organize it, power to metadata. I honestly makes me wish I were a library / informatics science person. We just have to get better at managing it all on your own. I unsubbed a lot of stuff recently on twitter and RSS to cope with it.
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
Matt – Should we be trying to aggregate everything using a tool like friendfeed? You put a lot of time and effort into collecting all the resources – it would be nice to automate this somehow.
I agree with Kyle’s point about the difficulty of attendees focusing on the presentation at hand. For example, during Karine’s closing keynote I was too busy taking notes to post much to Twitter. I guess it gets back to the synchronous/asynchronous segment of my keynote. How do we provide both real-time commentary and asynchronous commentary.
As of now, I won’t be attending HighEdWeb due to a limited travel budget, so I would love to make this happen.
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
Mark – Friendfeed was one of the tools that I used to aggregate all the stuff on my post. Here are all the tools I used for tracking to make that post. I think I was able to make it in a nice packaged form that friendfeed would not have been able to do.
As far as the attendees be selfish, you paid to be there so you should get the premiere experience, if it takes away from your learning ditch it. But I think there can be a nice give and take from on location and remote attendees.
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
@Mark – “during Karine’s closing keynote I was too busy taking notes to post much to Twitter” – no need to take notes since it was archived on ustream. :)
July 28th, 2008 at July 28, 2008
I think that the back channel for edu web was probably more interesting than the actual conference. I felt much more able to give my ACTUAL opinion about what was going on than if I had been there, which I feel is ultimately much more productive.
July 29th, 2008 at July 29, 2008
Mark, as the main organizer of the conference and knowing you’ll be participating in next year’s conference, I’m not upset in the least about the use of twitter and/or any live communication going on at the conference. I found it phenomenal that it was done to the extent it was and thrilled that it continues through some great blog posts! Many people have stated that it still meant a lot to BE THERE as in-person socializing and networking – the old-fashioned way – is still critical to a conversation with others and what is going on. Thanks for creating the aggregate and even myself needs to be more active with Twitter.
July 30th, 2008 at July 30, 2008
We’re experimenting with the backchannel for Campus Technology in Boston right now.
http://sites.google.com/site/camptech08/
I will say that the new ability for advanced search in Twitter search (Summize) allows me to filter the stream pretty effectively.
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23camptech08
But the stream isn’t valuable in itself, any more than a stock ticker. It is the multiple levels of aggregation, vetting, and summarizing. That’s worth a lot.
I think the “backchannel” will eventually become the “main channel” over time, in that I’ve chosen to meet people, in person, whom I’ve met through their streamed coverage.
The idea of conferences relying on the chalk-and-talk / sage-on-the-stage (choose your metaphor) model is a foundation. The virtual-to-real engagement between people with strong affinities: there’s the value.
There’s a thread at CUWebD on this right now.
September 19th, 2008 at September 19, 2008
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