Comments on: Back channel is powerful

By: James

James — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:59:15 +0000

Hi, I found your blog on this new directory of WordPress Blogs at blackhatbootcamp.com/listofwordpressblogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, i duno. Anyways, I just clicked it and here I am. Your blog looks good. Have a nice day. James.

By: Jay Collier

Jay Collier — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:10:16 +0000

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.

By: Shelley Wetzel

Shelley Wetzel — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:13:41 +0000

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.

By: Karlyn

Karlyn — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:11:05 +0000

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.

By: Todd

Todd — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:54:00 +0000

@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. :)

By: matt

matt — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:46:25 +0000

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.

By: Mark Greenfield

Mark Greenfield — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:40:28 +0000

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.

By: matt

matt — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:34:29 +0000

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.

By: Kyle James

Kyle James — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:31:09 +0000

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.

By: matt

matt — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:27:17 +0000

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.