Conference hack: Embracing the backchannel at Start, by Jeffrey Veen

Conference hack: Embracing the backchannel at Start

I had a very interesting experience a few months ago while participating in a panel discussion. Once again, I realized that the content on stage is merely the spark of a broader conversation, and that the backchannel is rapidly becoming the whole point. So we've decided to try an experiment at the Start Conference in a couple weeks to see how we might hack traditional presentations.

But let me back up a bit first. I was on a panel at this year's South by Southwest talking about the role of analytics in design. With me were two veterans of the advertising industry who's work included some of the biggest ad campaigns of the past few years - some really amazing stuff. I started the conversation by saying how the remarkable amount of audience data available to us gives designers tremendous power to affect user experiences. My collegues suggested my approach sucked the creativity out of design. I countered that they were mistaking preferential research from behavioral. The argument heated up.

While this was happening, my phone was buzzing non-stop. I slipped it out of my pocket to discretely turn it off, but noticed a stream of Twitters going by - many from audience members in the room. So I set the phone down on the table in front of me and kept an eye on it. I'm so glad I did.

As the conversation on stage continued, the stream of questions and comments from the audience intensified. I changed my tactics based on what I saw. I asked questions the audience was asking, and I immediately felt the tenor of the room shift towards my favor. It felt a bit like cheating on an exam.

I guess it really wasn't cheating, but it does illustrate one of the frustrations I've had at conferences lately. Most of the events I attend have a rich conversation happening in the room, yet the only people not able to participate are those on stage. A couple times, I've seen organizers project a live IRC channel, but that usually bring out the worst in people ("First!!!111") - and is terribly distracting. So I've been wondering for a while if there was something smart we could do at our conference.

Apparently, Bryan had the same idea. As we were planning Start, he said, "We should have someone onstage the whole time to represent the audience. Like an ombudsman does for a newspaper."

So we decided to put a desk on stage and have our friend George Oates fill that roll. She'll be on Twitter, IM, and email listening to what people are talking about. (We'll also have volunteers collecting index cards for those not wanting to be online during the sessions.) And she'll synthesize questions, interrupt us if we get boring, and call bullshit if something sounds like it. George has been the designer at Flickr since it started; her personality has always shown through there, and will be a great fit for what we're trying to do.

What do you think? I've never really seen a conference do something like this before. Have you?

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 25 July 2008 at 10:29 AM. It was filed under Personal.

Comments

1. On 25 July 2008 at 11:17 AM Michal Migurski wrote:

Matt Webb filled this ombudsman role in a four-person BBC talk at ETech in 2005. He used it to post explanatory links for things that the rest of the group talked about, it was quite effective.

2. On 25 July 2008 at 11:53 AM Jonas wrote:

I�ve seen a variant of this in several Swedish tv shows, ranging from political/social debates, sport shows and interviews. They have the regular experts and/or studio panel with the added input from the "audience" (via sms/mail).

It usually works great, but depends on the person being the ombudsman (yay, Swedish! :) and it seems you picked a great one.

Good luck!

3. On 25 July 2008 at 1:10 PM Raymond Brigleb wrote:

Great idea! Very excited about this conference...

4. On 25 July 2008 at 1:27 PM Joel Riggs wrote:

In 1986-1988, Raines Cohen transcribed/stenoed BMUG meetings in real time on his Mac, and his transcript was projected on a screen behind the head of the moderator and panel. During Q&A, sometimes an audience member would ask a poorly worded question. Raines would rewrite the question and post it to the screen for everyone to read, sometimes before the questioner finished; once in a while he would even post an answer before the panelists got a chance. Often Raines's answer was better, too. We in the audience loved it!

5. On 25 July 2008 at 1:54 PM Joe Clark wrote:

I seem to recall some kind of Joi Ito emergent-democracy conference many years ago that had an IRC feed projected on a screen. You didn�€™t have to be in the room to use that IRC channel, so I went right ahead and used it to call bullshit on half the nonsense being liveblogged through the channel. Apparently this became so distracting to panel(l)ists that they actually had to respond to what we were typing.

This is the point, is it not?

6. On 25 July 2008 at 3:21 PM JKE wrote:

Reminds me of this post by @dotBen way back in 2005.

7. On 26 July 2008 at 7:01 AM James Aylett wrote:

Paul Boag did something like this (taking questions over twitter etc. during solo presentations to enable follow-up discussions immediately after) at The Highland Fling this year: http://thehighlandfling.com/home

8. On 26 July 2008 at 9:01 AM Jamie McCarthy wrote:

When I spoke at OSCON a few years back, I invited everyone to join a talk-specific IRC channel. A friendly co-worker sat next to me reading, text-chatting with the audience, and interrupting me with audience requests when he felt it appropriate. Not an audience representative, but a speaker's assistant. I think it worked great. My talk was 50 minutes with a few dozen people but I suspect it would scale well to a few hundred.

9. On 26 July 2008 at 11:19 AM dave mcclure wrote:

sounds great jeff... looking forward to trying that out :)

in the past, i've tried to monitor tweets when i moderate and/or speak, but it can be tough to do both well at same time. nice to have an extra person with that as their primary focus.

fyi, here are some brief notes / thoughts from a previous group conversation about "Conference 2.0", after SXSW / before Web 2.0 Expo:
http://conf2.com/2008/04/07/conference-20-dinner-discussion-oatv-sf/

- dmc

10. On 26 July 2008 at 12:20 PM Maggie Longshore wrote:

This reminds me of how public radio shows like Talk of the Nation have evolved. Instead of waiting on hold on a phone, emailing your question is more likely to get an answer.

11. On 26 July 2008 at 9:32 PM Gregarious Narain wrote:

Jeff,

What you are suggesting sounds great. For Web 2.0 this year I put together the beginnings of a system like what you're talking about - we call it FrontChannel.

Take a look here for some details:
http://frontchannel.soup.io/

Let me know if you want to give it a shot.

- Gregarious

12. On 27 July 2008 at 6:45 PM Matt Singley wrote:

Fantastic! I will be at the conference and will tweet away.

A couple of housekeeping notes...who should we follow on Twitter for questions, and is there a conference hashtag? How about #start08 ?

I'm looking forward to this.

13. On 28 July 2008 at 2:19 PM Dan Serrato wrote:

Jeff,
This is very similar to what's happening in the educational technology community over the last couple of years. Many presenters at educational conferences are utilizing tools like Google Presentations and the chat feature or uStream to have a backchannel. The key for this to be successful is to have a chat moderator that can get the questions to the presenter in a way that doesn't impede the session. As an audience member, it's a very engaging activity and feels like you are much more a part of the presentation than just being spoken at.
Good luck with the conference and I hope that adding this interactivity brings a new level of engagement to your participants.

14. On 29 July 2008 at 2:23 AM heather gold wrote:

This is how I try to act when I'm hosting shows, panels and conferences.

The Heather Gold Show includes chat and I wrap that into the conversation and Iknow when Jerry Michalski does his Yi Tan conference calls he includes an IRC channel. When I guest hosted I wrapped between them.

This is a tough thing to do,threading live interaction and online comments love at a conference..it's good to have someone in that role.

I do think that at a live experinece though..if done really well, then fewer people will be on twitter if they feel the conversation is riveting and relevant and acknowledging the room.

I'm a big advocate of learning to read the room in more ways that Twitter streams.But it does take performance practice and a comfort in reading non verbal cues and a group. Stand-ups learn to read a room well.

15. On 30 July 2008 at 12:22 AM Ed wrote:

Sounds like a great idea! Twitter is a good way to throttle it too, limiting people to 140 characters instead of a wide open IRC channel for example.

(Is it safe to assume we'll have cell service and/or wireless in there?)

16. On 31 July 2008 at 1:51 PM Glenn wrote:

This is going to sound like a really stupid question. How does George know what twitters and IMs to listen to?

17. On 3 August 2008 at 9:51 AM George Oates wrote:

Not a stupid question at all! I was thinking the very same...

It might be good to create a new Start accounts on Twitter and IM that people can write to directly. I agree with Heather too - I'm not sure we'd like to encourage an alternate conversation to be happening at the same time as the interviews/presentations - much better to have an "ambient channel" to propose a question or comment, rather than pull attention away from what's happening on stage.

18. On 4 August 2008 at 3:22 PM Amar Ashar wrote:

Over the past few years, the Berkman Center at Harvard has utilized a number of tools to foster backchannel conversations at its conferences and other events, including, but not limited to:
* an IRC Chat
* a 'question tool' which we post on a projector for all attendees to see, where presenters are encouraged to pay attention/address those questions
* Second Life
* And a variety of other means -- here's a decent list of other social tools we used at our anniversary conference this past year:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/berkmanat10/Social_Tools