Web Directions

Great backchannel stories of our time

• By:Maxine
• Tweet: @maxine
• September 5, 2008
• Leave a response

John wrote here yesterday about Wifi availability at the conference venue this year. The good news is, if all goes according to plan, we should be swimming in the network, which is great.

There’s been a bit of talk about backchannels, and specifically, whether or not Wifi should be available in the theatres as well as the open spaces where we have lunch etc.

Let’s assume there are no technical issues to overcome for a moment (which there in fact are). I wonder if people might be able to give me specific examples of events they have been to where the backchannel was a real value add. What I need to know is:

How did the backchannel actually work? As in what technologies were used and how?

What great conversations took place on the backchannel and how did this add to the event?

How did the availability of Wifi within the theatres make the backchannel really work well?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

8 responses to “Great backchannel stories of our time”:

1. • By:john
   • September 5th, 2008
   

   And don’t mention Zukerberg/​Lacy @ SxSW whatever you do :-)

   http://valleywag.com/365726/zuckerberg–lacy-interview-video

2. • By:Jax
   • September 5th, 2008
   

   Personally, I don’t want people rattling away on their laptop sitting next to me. Worse even if it’s a mobile with keystroke sound on. Why bother being there if you can’t give the person on stage your full attention.
   Discussion can happen afterwards, IRL. And a full presentation review on a blogpost is more useful than a scattered twitter feed, I reckon.
   On the other hand a backchannel might be of interest to those unfortunate people who can’t be there, to get feedback in real time. Think of a Steve Jobs announcement or something.

3. • By:john
   • September 5th, 2008
   

   Ok, an example I loved from 2006.

   During a presentation by Cameron Adams, Cameron showed a photo on Flickr that had ben taken *during the presentation*.

   A few years back, for the first panel at SxSW I organised, we opened up a blog post for comments on one screen, so folks could post questions as we went along, and we could then choose questions we felt were pertinent, rather than either waiting ’til the end, or having the loudest voices get to ask the questions. Jeff Veen did something like this for his recent Start conference

   http://​www​.veen​.com/​j​e​f​f​/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​0​0​0​9​9​6​.​h​tml

   Maybe we should ask Jeff how that went?

   But a point to note — SxSW, and many other events are very panel heavy. Web Directions is very panel light. So, the kind of interaction that a panel encourages is very different from that associated with a prepared presentation. Interruptions often don’t work nearly so well. And with an audience of hundreds, who’ve made their decision and investment to see a specific presenter, we must be very mindful of any interruption to that.

   Short and long of it is that this is very hard to get right. I think the Zuckerberg example shows that. Not being there, but looking into it closely at the time (to among other things such an event didn’t occur at one of our conferences), I think that there was a fundamental mismatch between the audience expectation, and what the organisers put together. I also think, given some reports of the near euphoric atmosphere in the room at the outset, that perhaps many in the room were down right jealous of the fact it was Lacy getting to have the one on one with Zuckerberg, not them. Read some of the reported twitter comments of folks livid she was apparently flirting with Zuckerberg, and so on. A feeding frenzy then ensued.

   In time I think we’ll adapt to the availability of these technologies, both in terms of how we use them and in terms of how conferences are structured.
   But experiences like that at SxSW certainly give us pause.

4. • By:oliverw
   • September 5th, 2008
   

   I’m a huge fan of the backchannel.

   As for the keyboard noise, I agree it’s probably more if backchannel is on, but people will be still twittering via the mobile/​cell network and typing notes from the talks without WiFi anyway.

   For me the O’Reilly Emerging Tech conference 2003 was one of the best backchannels with conference chat rooms turned on, Hydra had just come out for collaborative document creation and IM was blazing over bonjour. A good audience should have as nearly as much to add to the talk (comments, insights, related URLs, related research, similar products services etc). See Corante esp. Clay Shirky for more…

   Apple’s WWDC ’08 had an insane conference Network Operations Centre with data visualisations of the WiFi use by device type. They were also very good at informing people of the network availability in advance of the conference and recommended SSIDs (iPhone & Laptop etc), plenty of powerpoints etc. The network was rock solid, but that’s to be expected for a conference of that size.

   To me a good backchannel really makes a difference at conference (either between conference attendees and between attendees and the outside world) and in fact should be incorporated into the conference (on a small scale we are experimenting with showing the Twitter feed during talks at Mobile Monday).

5. • By:Diana
   • September 5th, 2008
   

   Hey, as you probably know we had wifi available during the lgwebnetwork conference and we used twitter search to provide a way to post comments on the conference as it was happening.

   I’m not sure how much that added to the event itself, except to raise awareness of twitter and how it can be used, and to add a bit of fun to the event — our objective was to get more gov people using twitter to stay connected with the lgwebnetwork community — which it did achieve in part.

   The biggest benefits I think were:
   a) we got feedback on how the conference was going as it was happening
   b) we have a history of the activity at the conference to look back on
   c) people not at the conference could see some of what they were missing out on!
   d) we got more of our network peeps following us on twitter, many of which have continued to use it to communicate with us, and more have started using it since.

   If we didn’t have wifi during the sessions people (without web enabled phones) would not have been able to tweet about the sessions as they were happening (its difficult to remember funny quotes all the way til the break!), I guess though that might not be a major issue now as so many people can use their mobiles, although maybe not so great now that SMS updates not available anymore.

   Hope that’s useful feedback.

6. • By:Halans
   • September 5th, 2008
   

   Makes perfect sense for panel discussions with audience interaction. Makes it easier than running around with a microphone.

   Maybe provide hashcodes in the conference program for each session, so people in other rooms can track the other sessions?

7. • By:Stephen Collins
   • September 5th, 2008
   

   At Enterprise 2.0 in Boston this year (one of the best organised conferences ever), the backchannel was pervasive and useful. Every session had a resource page on a Jive Clearspace instance and a custom Meebo room was embedded in each page. There was also unofficial backchannel via Twitter and hashtagging — #e20.

   Every attendee was granted access to the Clearspace instance if they wanted it (opt-​​in). This gave:

   - asset pages for each session (edit-​​locked to closed group or organisers and presenters) to hold intro material, handouts and slides
   – all opted-​​in users the ability to comment via in-​​page comments (like blog comments)
   – all users regardless able to use embedded Meebo rooms on session pages
   – a common hashtag for the entire conference, so something like #wds08 for this conference

   You can see this all at http://​community​.e2conf​.com/​i​n​d​e​x​.​j​spa. Drill down into and of the left-​​menu options to see details.

   Probably 30–50 per cent of every session had people with laptops, iPhones or Blackberrys live blogging or in the backchannel.

   The conference also supplied 15–20 powerpoints via power boards *per row of seats* in every room (there were up to four concurrent, I think) as well as ample power in the breakout areas.

   I would encourage pervasive wireless — every room and breakout area — as well as having something like a conference wiki or like E2.0’s Clearspace instance so that assets and discussions about each session can be recorded for posterity.

8. • By:Mark pesce
   • September 7th, 2008
   

   Well, I was going to make lots of good comments about the importance of the backchannel (which is Twitter, Twitter, and Twitter, btw) but I reckon it’s been covered quite well by all these other folks.

   It isn’t just passing notes in class (though sometimes it is that, too). It is a way to amplify the ideas of the audience.

   That said, it would be great if the instructor/panelist(s)/moderators had access to the same back channel.

Your opinion: