The Back Channel

[Tony Dunn]

Matt Herzberger sort of started this discussion with his post about the back channel at eduWeb.

So I sent the following email to the HighEdWeb conference chairs:

I’m looking forward to attending the conference this year. There’s already some minor buzz on Twitter and uwebd (http://cuwebd.ning.com/) around the conference.

I think you’ve already gotten a message from Matt Herzberger about making the ‘back channel’ a bit more of a front channel (http://mattherzberger.com/2008/07/28/back-channel-is-powerful/). I’d like to see this as well. I’d really like to see it become an integrated part of the conference as a way to encourage multiple levels of communication and to engage more people into becoming more active participants in the conference instead of just passive consumers of conference sessions.

I’d also like to know who’s attending so that I can hook up with them ahead of time in order to arrange meetups, dinners, etc. There have been a few feeble attempts to begin organizing meetups, but it would be great if you made that functionality part of the conference site. Allow people to sign up on the site, put in their Twitter addresses – and whatever else – and hook up with people that they want to meet at the conference, follow them on Twitter, read their blogs, etc. I think this would do a lot to help build a sense of community around the conference and encourage people to get to know the presenters and their fellow attendees better.

In addition, uStreaming and archiving each session (with the presenter’s permission) would be another great addition, particularly if the uStream and video archive were linked to directly from the conference site. That would benefit both those not attending and those who want to attend more than one session at a time.

I think additions would really a new level of conference experience and participation among attendees.

Thanks,

Tony Dunn
WCMS Coordinator
CSU, Chico

Anyone want to add anything to this discussion?

I'd like to see HighEdWeb build off of eduWeb and take it to the next level. What are your thoughts.

[Genevieve Howard]

I completely agree about your thoughts on community. I think the point of a conference is to build and strengthen community so the learning continues and doesn't end when the conference ends.

I'm not a Twitter-user but encouraging communication in general and the archiving of sessions would be useful to me.

[Steve]

As someone who just started to Twitter, I think I'm converted to the potential here. But I have trouble getting past this cartoon.

[Tony Dunn]

Then, of course, there's this cartoon.

[Michael Fienen]

Hah, I was in that comic. And I also did that first comic after it came out, because I'm disgusting like that.

[Paul Gilzow]

I think this is a fantastic idea. I know that if I have a laptop with me at a conference, I'm usually conversing online with at least one other person about the presentation. So the ability to combine all of those individual conversations into one central area is exciting, and I see great potential in it.

HOWEVER, and this is my thinking as being one of the presenters this year, we only have 45 minutes to present. My presentation normally takes 1 hour without time for questions, so I'm really going to have to cram to get it to all fit. So while I would LOVE to able to address all the questions that are going to come in via this channel, with the way this conference is set up, I just don't see how presenters will be able to, given the amount of time we have been allotted.

What I would like to see is the Audience ombudsman work with the presenter after the presentation is over to pick out the most relevant questions that were brought up, and then post answers some where (here maybe?) that all attendees can find them later on. Or maybe the powers that be will allow those presenters who get a ton of back channel questions to use up one of the "Best Presentations Repeated" sessions to go through and answer questions.

[Michael Fienen]

By the way, I plan on tweeting and liveblogging (on .eduGuru) from the conference, just FYI. Happy to see if we can coordinate with others to aim for good coverage of everything.

[Anne Petersen]

We used the Berkman Live Question tool at an in-house conference-type-thing. Here's an example: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/list.php (pick any of the LDSC options to see how we used it).

We had a projector next to the presenter, and the presenter would occasionally glance at it and pick one to address. The cool thing about this tool is that the audience could have conversations using it, or vote questions up to the top of the page to catch the eye of the presenter.

[Nikki Massaro Kauffman]

We should have our Twitter names on our name tags as well.