i spent a chunk of today "participating online" in the 'web 2.0 summit' hosted by the City of Toronto, subtitled "Moving towards Government 2.0" [see the Agenda]. i hadn't heard anything about it until a tweet from Kevin Von Appen of the Ontario Science Centre mentioned he was speaking. the event offered 'on-line participation' and since i didn't have a time to head downtown i figured i'd check it out.
what i got was a lesson in how not to run an on-line event. rather than use the opportunity to model the kinds of changes in communications patterns that 'web 2.0' tech enables, the event was a one-way, an opportunity to watch 'guys in the know' talk to each other. video went out from the meeting, complete with horrible music when there was a break in the audio feed. "questions" could be submitted through an 'ask a question' form, but they turned out to be highly moderated. [there was no mention of moderation anywhere in the prep materials.] there was a link to 'view the moderators board', but from my experience a lot of what was asked never made it there. at one point it disappeared completely for me. there was also a form to enter 'comments'. where they went was anyone's guess. i couldn't find any trace of what i submitted, anywhere [though tech support did tell me the went 'into the same database as everything else'. how reassuring.]
what was missing:
the event was saved by twittersearch: it enabled the formation of an ad hoc backchannel, and a few people in the room were able to answer questions from those online. there was a bit of conversation, and a few people [including me] made some new connections.
but what a waste! this was a chance to get some creative input from a broad range of people about ways to get the city out to where the people are. instead, of embracing a participatory ethos and learning what people care about by listening to what they say, the city modelled the worst of the conference experience online.
i'm thinking about this in the context of Museums and the Web. we're often asked why we don't "webcast" MW, and my answer is that video feeds from conferences are usually horrible -- my experience today proved that. it's not about the quality of the video, it's about the rest of the 'meeting experience'. Remember, i'm the one who recommended from the podium at an opening plenary that if you have to make a choice between an interesting conversation with a new person and a paper you want to hear, choose the conversation! conferences are about interactions. the papers are all on-line.
if we were to take M2009 itself online – and it's something we're thinking about with travel budgets shrinking as we watch – it would have to be in a context that enabled a truly hybrid space to evolve, where people could connect with each other whether they were on-site or on-line and where ideas and conversation could flow from one space to the other.
And that's a whole new meeting to run! i haven't seen an environment that really works. have you?
/jt
p.s. don't restrict attendance to invitation only and then show all kinds of empty seats in your video feed
and pps. there are more women in the city who know lots about this stuff! take a look at the male/female ratio on the speakers list and be embarassed.
Comments
High expectations for online conferences
As I work from home, I attend web conferences all the time and I am pretty happy that I can see and hear the speakers. Once in a blue moon my question gets through the queue. While I would like to attend more face to face, it really is not physically possible for me most of the time. So, for me, web conferencing is the best thing since sliced bread.
IMHO - Unless the online conference you were in had only a handful of online watchers AND the conference only let in invited and entitled participants (registered and signed in) to participate in the chat, I can see why the questions coming in would have be moderated. Yes, it is frustrating not to get confirmation that your question is in a queue and can be viewed by the moderators. But it could be mayhem if anyone with a hotmail address could post any comment or shout it out on the phone while several people are trying to present.
The fact that you were able to "get in" to the conference without being invited probably meant that the barrier for entry was set low with the hopes of many online participants. This meant that questions in would have to be highly moderated (unless you are ok with spam, profanity, and the same question being asked by 10 people).
A reasonable improvement to this scenario would be that all the questions coming in are collected with email addresses and the presenters get back to you later.
In the end, a great beginning!
No doubt there was a TON of room for improvement here. But in the context of Gov 2.0, it was a good beginning.
The art of extending an engaging face-to-face event to online participation is a difficult one. Clearly, the webcasting vendor and how it was managed was a big part of the problem here. But it also demonstrates, as you point out, how Twitter is just so much better because it doesn't require the organizers to even do anything. The conversation just emerges. The tag #to20 was decided upon by the participants, not the organizers. And it worked. Fabulously. I couldn't get the video feed to work my my OSX/Firefox setup, but I followed along on Twitter search and got the vibe of it - which was more important to me than the content.
For those Gov participants who are interested in continuing the conversation with Toronto's web 2.0 community, I'm looking to connect people and discuss possible next steps. DM/email me.
good use of twitter does take coordination
Mark, we agree that twitter saved the day for this gov2.0 event. but self-organization works for people who are active already. the online-offline bridge between participants in various spheres still needs to be facilitated, and the mental model – that pushing content out is good enough – needs to change.
i for was wasn't content to just 'follow along': count me in for futher discussions.
/jt
j. trant archives & museum informatics www.archimuse.com
on line participation
Hi Jennifer,
I recently organized an on-line meeting between the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and University of Art & Design in Helsinki. The meeting was a huge success and I think for the following reasons:
- we had on-line speakers video feeds projected on a separate screen;
- on-line speakers could see their own contributions (images, PowerPoints, etc) on another ('main') screen, as well as most of the in-person participants;
- in person participants could ask questions and engage in dialogue with on-line contributors just by sitting on a chair in front of Web cam;
This kind of setup created an antmosphere that everyone was present at the same place in person. Towards the end of the meeting in-person participants have completely forgot that they are communicating with a person on a different continent with 7 hours difference in time (and had to be reminded of that)...
Well, I guess the summary of the experience is:
- make it as 'live' as possible;
- provide live feed of what is actually going on to all parties;
warm regards,
Slavko Milekic, M.D., PhD
Professor of Cognitive Science & Digital Design
University of the Arts, Philadelphia
how many people?
thanks slavko.
can you answer a couple of question for me?
thanks!
jt
j. trant archives & museum informatics www.archimuse.com
Macromedia's Online Meetings
When I was the Macromedia User Group Manager in Philadelphia many of MM's meetings with managers were conducted using Breeze Live. http://www.adobe.com/resources/breeze/products/live/
The functionality included vid feed, screen share, chat Q&A and sessions could be recorded for later playback. It now appears that the Breeze functionality has been incorporated into Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/
Bill Ristine
Webmaster
Philadelphia Museum of Art
www.philamuseum.org
online conferences - analogue or digital?
I didn't myself get a chance to sample what you participated in Jennifer, but have also experienced frustration along similar lines with 'big media' sites like the BBC.
It seems to me that webcast conferences, and particularly linear narrative experiences like videocasts/video conferencing, suffer from being 'narrowcast' pipelines where you can't stop the feed, can't chop, change or choose the thing you're consuming.
Unlike, of course, the web experience where you can search/choose the content and then consume at will, in the maner that suits best.
I'm presently involved with an IPTV startup project where the principal instigator still wants what he calls 'video on demand' which in actuality is video streaming - which is a didactic channel, one which can't be intermediated at all. Where the real hits are is in totally interactive choice of multimedia online, which is why YouTube is so amazingly popular.
Re MW 2009 and online; you're right, a diversity of channels for interaction, a democratisation of participation and a notion of clarity at all times will work.
We need channels that allow cross posting, tags that can clump comments together and remove the need for writing the same comments in several blog settings, and ways to get people to join in because they feel left out if they don't...
And if the comments of those who aren't present at the conference can be seen by people who are at the conference, and vice versa, all the better -
All the best
Jon Pratty
http://machineculture.wordpress.com/
true
It's the city's first attempt, as far as I know, to use this conference format and I am ready to forgive them for their shortcomings. I also tried to leave comments that disappeared and engage within this highly moderated space - with varied success, since some of my comments never made it to the board.
I do think, though, that this is an important step forward by the city. Hopefully they use more than just word of mouth to promote similar events in the future! I also found out about this event randomly through friends of friends.
I am interested in the Museums and the Web, and would like to profile this initiative in my blog, communicable.ca, where I'm trying to talk about how nonprofits can use social media. Please DM me on @communicable on twitter if you are interested.
Baby Steps
Thanks for the post. I agree, and particularly that the discussion needs to continue. I hoped that there would be back channels of conversation so that we could reach out an interested community who 1) wants transparency, 2) wants two-way communication and 3) wants to know that their messages are being heard.
This summit was organized as a chance for the city (and particularly our decision makers) to hear about these themes and to get engaged. The feed was orginaly only going to be internal but we decided to open it up ( we didn't want to close this importnat door for you and the conversation we can have) We're listening. We're listening and taking our first steps to be more like the model you suggested.
Keep following us on twitter (@dmathe, @cityoftoronto, Adcarr_TOweb) and listen as we enter the websphere to engage.
Thank you again for your post. Post more. Tell us more. We're listening.
Denis Carr
User Experience Architect
City of Toronto
dcarr2@toronto.ca
T: @dcarr_TOweb
Excellent points
A lot of us here in Toronto want to be positive and embrace this attempt by the city to dunk its toe in the 2.0 space. But this event so far has simply shown how difficult true change will be for Toronto.
So far, as you said, the most positive outcome from all of this is the new set of Twitter connections I've made watching the Twitter feed at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23to20
Thanks for this post, what we need is to keep the conversation going.
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