Backchannels often are snarky– the etech backchannel is crazily-so, for instance– but it is still valuable. It provides a social presence that then continues between sessions, at dinners, etc. I don’t think that the backchannel activity steals from the attention to the presentation just as I don’t believe that computers with web access steal from me in the classroom– if I’m not being engaging enough (and no one will be 100% of the time), why not channel some of that energy into a tangential forum in addition to all the disconnected activities (email, etc).

I don’t know of the value of a backchannel in a wholly online event– seems like it is greatly lessened. I didn’t miss it at the Connectivism conference, for instance, because I knew that I would “only” be able to email or discuss with them asynchronously anyway.

And transcripts, snarkiness and all, are incredibly valuable to the presenters for thinking about and assessing their own performance.

What the heck is an “online conference” anyways? Conferences in the f2f world bring a lot of people from different places to the same place at the same time. Yet in the online world we are already “in the same place” and I thought the virtue of the technology was specifically not to have to be dictated by the tyranny of same timeness (e.g. ‘timeshifting’).

The 3 or 4 days leading up to the video presentation, where Brian and colleagues called out for contributions, felt more like what I want from an online ‘event’ than the actual 1 hour presentation of the results (this is not a slag on the ‘presentation’ at all; I loved the wiki and the presentation, but I’m trying to get at the idea that process, granularity and conversation are the important thing here). There was an idea. A call for participation. I gave it some attention and contributed some things. I saw as we went what others were contributing, and saw a consversation unfold around that, and made connections with others based on what they had offered up. While the end result was probably important for spurring on the action, it was the action leading up to it that was the event for me.

George Siemens pointed to an article about Ze Frank today (http://www.slate.com/id/2162553/) and noted the term “conversational energy” as key to helping learning and connection to form. Rather than having scheduled “2 day online events” I would love it if an organization like NMC (or whoever) had me on the edge of my seat waiting for when the next “earth sandwich” (go read the article) “learning happening” was going to take place, where I could contribute my bit and learn from my co-contributors, make connections and friendships that would last longer than any 2 day extravaganza.

It’s Monday morning. We ran out of coffee and I’m drinking instant. Please forgive the incoherence.

I’ve left the chat app running, and just now realized it’s been infiltrated by spammers. dayum. they’ll infest anything…

Jim- Thanks for such a thoughtful reply, one has to love a blog comment that has as much or more meat than the original post. The first generation of NMC online conferences were more like that; presentations were done as pre-recorded Breeze packages, available to all, and then the conference part was a bit more conversational. This created a nicer archive in terms of the presentation, but if I recall, there was not was much “activity” at discussion time, that the level of participation was not wide. I am not sure if enough people would be game enough to put together what the 4 of you did.

Chris – I too would like some integration of that channel. Not sure of one needs a backchannel “facilitator” or someone who can summarize?? The mood hmm… often seems to be snarky!!

Thanks all for some thought food.

I’ve also long had the idea of having an ambient device– an orb light, for example– that changed color depending on the mood of the backchannel. Even reading and using the old geek standby of + and – in the backchannel to convey the mood/tone in a way that the presenter is aware of but doesn’t take as much multi-tasking cognition as actually trying to read the backchannel conversation and talk at the same time.

I’ve also experimented with having the backchannel displayed next to me while I’m talking, but I found it impossible not to engage with it :)

A series of slides with a lecture-like narration, no matter how gifted the speaker, doesn’t really suit this “live, online” given that podcasts and vodcasts are ubiquitous. Why not just line up the podcasts once the conference is over and work through them at your leisure? What does this kind of environment offer that a similar set of lectures that you listen to and then blog about afterwards fails to provide?

I think that the idea of leaving behind an online, dynamic, and participatory resource, as Brian Lamb framed as part of the raison d’être of our session, really begins to suggest the power of an event like this conference. It affords an occasion for folks to develop and design something for others to think about and participate in around a focused theme. What I got from that presentation was that a few things need to happen: 1) You need to conceptualize something unique (the hardest part), 2) engage others throughout the blogosphere to flesh it out, 3) capture that process, and, finally, 4) reflect upon it leaving a resource for others to contribute to, return to, and remix for themselves.

Now that is a style of presentation that actually mirrors the shifting notions of mashing up education with the various technological tools we all have so much fun talking about. The presentation is a conversation about the process, maybe not well rehearsed or polished, but an iteration of a conceptual model to somehow reflecting the processes by which many of these online communities are engaged in an ongoing process of sharing, collaborating, teaching, and learning.