So… the idea was with the Blogtalk Blog to open it up as a kind of asynchronous backchannel / space for sharing stuff.
I figured, partly as a result of an excellent comment from Peter Bolger, that a blog would work well this way and that it would save the stress / issues that a backchannel usually has. Plus, given the medium, probably the best thing to do was to let questions & stuff come out asynchronously through it (there being plenty enough of them f2f at the conf).
Am not sure how much that has happened (questions) but there has been a lot of good sharing and commenting… hopefully there’ll be some good reflection too and it saves a heck of a lot of stress for organisers, in terms of shifting the uploading of presentations :o)
Next time I think I’ll do something similar… don’t reckon I’d run with a backchannel unless there were 200+ participants.
Any suggestions for improvement?
Agree on the backchannel, you need a fair few participants and probably the right group as well.
I think the open conference blog works for certain aspects of, such as general announcement, uploading content and highlevel discussion. However there are limitations. Firstly from a blog point of view most people want to share their thoughts and ideas on their own blog, to keep the narrative going and keep their readers informed. Secondly we need to look at tools/services from cultural perspective, a huge amount of discuss, planning and general idea sharing took place during the breaks and at the pub on both days. This seems to be a fairly common occurence at conferences, I am not sure that technology during the conference would ever catch this (maybe Mick with his iPod recording would?).
In the short term (aka using the tools we have available today) techniques like tags (http://www.technorati.com/tag/BlogTalkDownunder) give you some of the combined reflection, but not what you are really looking for.
Longer term I feel new tools (and techniques) are needed to help build a collaborative community around the conference.
I think the idea was very good and did allow a great method for presenters to distribute ideas and content.
Hi Michael, you’re in far too much of a groove at the moment… by a long way… my weary postings feel far too lax!
Thanks for the thoughts on the channel and the blog. I agree it works at one level (and could do with another one)… perhaps we’re looking for something a bit more accessible… or perhaps it’s just that we need *more time to talk*
Either way, enjoyable stuff… am still not convinced by tags though :D
Cheers, James