Conferences and Technology

A recent article at Educause, Social Software and the
Future of Conferences – Right Now, explores how technology might be utilized to enhance the social aspects of participating in a conference.

They have some great ideas here. Last summer I attended the FlashForward2004 conference in NYC, which was a great experience. They had a Flash social site set up, and encouraged everyone to utilize it both before, during and after the conference. I logged in with the account they supplied me and the concept was pretty good. I went through a registration process where I entered all sorts of professional and personal information. Once logged in I could see a world of other registrees, and those with the interested closest to mine were closer to me as visual circles. I could view potions of other people profiles, and there was some internal email and IM capabilities. Anyhow the concept was cool and the graphics were neat (all Flash driven don't you know!) but you can see how much sticking power it had -- I can't even find the bookmark anymore! And I'd imagine my experience wasn't unique.

One really neat social software-meets-conference experience occurred in a session featuring Colin Moock. He was presenting on experiments he's been working on with interactive websites. One aspect of this is you can see who else is on a website when you are and you can see where they move their mouse. In this case it helps you see which are the most clicked links, almost like dog-ears in a book, which help you see which are the most read pages. Another metaphor is a path through the woods -- you may not know where it leads, but if others have gone there, there must be something good at the end.

It was really neat talk and his website at http://www.moock.org has more information on this. But the really cool thing that happend is he started demonstrating this is a confernce room full of people with wireless-network-enabled laptops. And so as he was demonstrating his website people starting logging in and clicking around. Pretty soon there were words and doodles starting to appear as a result of the clicks. A couple of HIs and even a penis appeared. Needless to say this free exchange happening on the display behind him started to be a little distracting for Mr. Moock. But it was a really effective, and unintended, example of how attractive his ideas were.

One idea I have been kicking around for a couple of years it to host my own weekend conference. I'd love to get a bunch of smart people together to talk about smart things. And I think I'll get there sooner or later. But I also realized I could start to put together my own online, virtual conference, AND invite all my favorite speakers. The audio presentations at IT Conversations, http://www.itconversations.com has a lot of good stuff. So far the talks by Douglas Rushkoff and Malcolm Gladwell are my top two favorites. So I can make them my keynote speakers for day one and day two! Anyhow, in my spare time (ha ha) I may actually try to put something together. But until then take a look yourself, and load them into your iPod.