Is anyone listening? WiFi and the new ADD, by Jeffrey Veen

Is anyone listening? WiFi and the new ADD

I like being connected. I like being able to just open up my laptop and start communicating - catch up on email, stay current with my project, say hi to friends. I don't like being offline, wondering what's going on. I like to have the choice.

I also go to a lot of conferences. Since they are technology-related events, they almost all have WiFi open for attendees to use. It makes sense, really, since it's just a matter of a cheap router plugged into the venue's network. Some conferences are even starting to lay down power strips in the rooms. So I sit down, plug in, log on. Great!

All of this is fine until I get up on the stage, because I also speak at a lot of events. Recently, I've been finding myself speaking to rooms full of attendees with heads down and typing. At first, I was happy to assume people taking were notes or blogging the event. But my recent informal surveys as an attendee (that is, looking around at screens) shows me that most folks are buried in email, feed readers, and various web-surfing activities.

This was most apparent at a recent presentation I gave in which someone from the audience asked a question almost verbatim to one asked just five minutes before. There was a bit of nervous laughter, and I tried to be graceful, but it appears that a lot of the events I'm attending are suffering from overall attention deficit.

The problem isn't limited to conferences -- not at all. Portable computing and ubiquitous connectivity are starting to affect how meetings are being conducted in companies, too. Linda Stone of Microsoft gave an excellent presentation at this year's Supernova conference that was well covered by O'Rielly Radar and virtually plagiarized by someone on Microsoft's Small Business site. Her point: Be aware of why you're some place, communicate that, and use technology accordingly.

Clearly, laptops in conference sessions are a mixed blessing. While attention suffers, there are many benefits -- some we're only starting to explore. During a panel discussion at South by Southwest, I told my audience to IM questions to me if they found the microphone intimidating. Many did. It was cool. I've also seen speakers offer up URLs for the demos they're showing, encouraging the crowd to play along and ask questions as they go.

And finally, there is the reality of needing to be connected. As danah boyd realized earlier this year, she sometimes needs to be in two places at once:

No, i'm not going to be 100% present at SXSW but if that's what's required to go, than i can't go. I figure it's better to be 60% there than not at all. I'll still be goofing around in the hallways, meeting new people and rekindling relationships with old friends who i wouldn't see otherwise.

So what's the best solution? Should conference planners make WiFi available in the halls but not the session rooms? Should the net be down during conference time, but up on breaks? Maybe it's similar to mobile phone etiquette 10 years ago -- we all learned not to answer at the restaurant and to silence the thing in the theater. Maybe people will pay attention when they should, because not doing so is just, well, embarrassing.

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 9 August 2005 at 9:47 PM. It was filed under Technology. | View blog reactions

Comments

1. On 9 August 2005 at 11:23 PM James wrote:

Well, you'd think people that come to these conferences would want to listen. So really, it's their loss. I'm sick of seeing mobile phones light up in theatres; most people have at least learned to switch them to silent, but that doesn't stop them SMSing. You paid good money to be at a movie - or conference (or your bosses good money, and maybe that's what it comes down too) - so why don't people get their money's worth? If you are going to spend all your time on your laptop, basically there probably wasn't much point you even going to the conference - from my perspective anyway.

2. On 10 August 2005 at 3:38 AM Michael Heilemannic wrote:

At reboot, a Danish conference a few weeks back, i took "this photo", which seems to capture exactly what you mean. Though fair enough, it was before the keynote started. Though I don't think that made much of a difference.

The cool thing however, was that during keynotes, the IRC channel would suddenly transform itself into a hivemind of sorts. Everyone being in the same place, listening to the same thing, commenting on it. And also, people would use "SubEthaEdit":http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ as a social notebook of sorts.

While we might have some ettiquette problems, I think there's a lot we can gain from our newfound portable instant'o'hivemind technology :)

3. On 10 August 2005 at 5:06 AM Dan wrote:

Last week I was a guest speaker in a graduate level class. Every desk had a terminal connected to the internet. At any one time, at least half the class was distracted by something on the computer in front of them.

I would have liked to walk around the classroom to see what people were looking at, but the configuration of the room made that impossible. I was able to see a couple screens and noticed that one guy was reading *my* weblog. I couldn't help but think, "When did my online self become more interesting than my real self?"

4. On 10 August 2005 at 5:14 AM Ian Brown wrote:

I would have thought that people would want to listen to what's being said in a conference. If they've paid to get in, as some venues require it and others don't, I know that I would want to make the most out of my money by actually listening to the speaker. Or at least pretending to.

I know that I were to be speaking I would find it incredibly rude if someone decided to email their friend about meeting up after the conference.

It's almost as if, the Wi-Fi has given us the chance to throw any sort of manners out of the window. Which is a shame really. Although, I think that disabling Wi-Fi in the conference halls would be a bad idea, owing to the fact that people are actually sometimes genuinely following what you're saying.

Maybe it's just a fad and it'll disappear and become part of etiquette, like mobile phones on silent.

5. On 10 August 2005 at 5:32 AM Maxine wrote:

From one of the organisers at a certain web development conference at which a certain user experience guy will be speaking: Jeff, I agree with you, I think......

On the one hand I think Wifi in the theatre is more bad than good. Yeah, there's the cool things that you and others have mentioned, and the idea of the "mindhive" is awesome. But we all know the reality is people not listening to the presentation, idly reading emails, chatting, whatever. So, almost certainly, we're not going to have Wifi in the room, though it looks like we will be able to have it outside, which is great.

OTOH, I do feel like a bit of a crotchety old bat for taking this stand, and in my heart of hearts I'd like to be the kind of clever and perseistent person who could ponder this problem in the context of the thoughts in this article:

http://shirky.com/writings/group_user.html

which would say that you have to accept that "ADD is the new black" and work with this, rather than against it. But I'm too busy organising a conference and trying to get some Wifi for the delegates :-)

6. On 10 August 2005 at 3:07 PM John Y. wrote:

Personally, I left my laptop where I was staying at SxSW this year -- I figured it was too likely to distract me from the panels. The only time I wished I'd had it was when you suggested IMing questions to you like that, Jeff -- but, for me, not being able to do that was worth not having to carry the thing around and not having yet another item to distract me from listening.

7. On 10 August 2005 at 5:57 PM john anon wrote:

Did we all learn not to answer at the restaurant and to silence the thing in the theater tho? Seems like you can spot somebody having a cell phone conversation at almost any moment in any restaurant.

8. On 10 August 2005 at 6:30 PM Seth wrote:

I don't even know what I'm commenting about. I barely read the first and last sentences... I was IMing, paying bills and watching TV. Sorry. Keep up the good work!

9. On 11 August 2005 at 12:44 PM Sam Burns wrote:

How about better conferences, especially more carefully planned panel discussions? It's one thing to be discourteous, but you seem only to be talking about your perception of how engaged people are with what you and others have to say. Asking a question twice is regrettable, but hardly new to the Internet age. Your IM idea was terrific, an excellent way to vie for attention and circumvent a common anxiety. Before we kill WiFi in the room, maybe a better question is why do you care (short of disruptions to others and you), why do you assume you know what people are thinking about, and why isn't this just a challenge to be more engaging? Business meetings and conferences had signal to noise imbalances before the Internet. Turn off WiFi and I'll just be bored and inattentive the old fashioned way.

10. On 12 August 2005 at 9:52 PM zephoria wrote:

Actually, Jeff, it's the opposite of what you suggest. I want WiFi only during the sessions but not during breaks. I go to conferences for the breaks, for the random networking and goofing around and sharing new ideas. Unlike James, i don't go to events for the panels. I don't learn through audio (with or without a laptop) unless it's a conversation. And that's not possible with so many people in the room. And honestly, there's very rarely anything new being discussed - i'm too immersed in the space. I sit in on panels in case there's something super interesting but mostly to get a gist and wait for the next break. I know that the "responsible" thing would be to say that i'm paying attention to the panelists, but frankly, i'm not. I'm there to meet people not to listen to speeches. At SXSW this year, i decided to just admit this to myself and attend no panel (except my own). I learned more that way than i ever had at a professional conference. And i enjoyed myself ten times more.

11. On 14 August 2005 at 11:53 PM Michael Heilemann wrote:

Jeffery, could you remove the last c from my name in comment #2? And then insert this photo link; I must've typed it in textile by accident.

12. On 15 August 2005 at 8:52 AM James wrote:

At the apple store in London upstairs, my best guess would be about 2 to 10 percent of the audience is there to listen to the presentation. The rest is there for the free wifi only. In fact a massive amount of people downstairs in the showroom are simply checking their email using the place as a free internet cafe.

Whether this is a good thing or not (for apple), I'm not sure. You'd need access to their books.

13. On 15 August 2005 at 9:08 AM Dan Martens wrote:

Just an idea, but... why not use a proxy server in conjunction with the wireless access point? That way, at any given time, you could control what website conference attendees are viewing. If you are seeing a lack of attention while presenting you just change the proxy settings to redirect all web requests to a page with a big arrow, and something along the lines of "Please focus your attention on the speaker". That would surely make people pay attention. Though at a big conference, i'm not sure how feasible this would be...

14. On 15 August 2005 at 9:32 AM veen wrote:

Ha! Yeah, a content-based proxy server!

"Hey, you in the second row. You didn't spend your whole training budget just to download porn, did you?"

15. On 15 August 2005 at 10:21 AM Jameson wrote:

From Dan (#3 above):

"I couldn't help but think, 'When did my online self become more interesting than my real self?'"

This is really interesting, and reminds me of the "ticker" across the bottom of CNN. Someone is listening to the speaker, appreciates his perspective, but isn't interested in the particular topic at hand. Surfing the blog is like fast-forwarding to another chapter. "Let's see what this guy has to say on such-and-such..."

16. On 17 August 2005 at 7:53 AM Andy wrote:

On the surface, your post is just another "Why isn't my class paying attention to me?" problem that teachers/speakers have struggled with forever. Surfing is no different than doodling in your notebook. In web terms, the answer is simple. Dynamic, fresh, new content.

I think you and a couple of commentors have touched on an even deeper subject. Is the conference necessary? Is a classromm necessary? (forget live social interaction, live questions etc... for the moment) Why should you, the presenter, attend multiple conferences to present the same subject. Why should a teacher give the same lecture every semester. Maybe we have actually reached the point in internet time where this type of material is better as post once view many. Then you the presenter can always move on to new material and update the old with answers. And we as attendees can always start at the beginning and end up at your newest ideas

Next thing you know, you will be giving a presentation and as you walk by someone will be viewing your presentation online ;-)

17. On 17 August 2005 at 10:46 PM roland wrote:

JV - interesting post.... But, Dan (#3) really brings up the point -

Roland