The new conferences – web enabled

 

I visited eComm in Amsterdam last week – a conference on emerging communication with a high-paced information packed program. I enjoyed it but afterwards reflected a little bit on how internet ‘backchannels’ are changing the way we experience these conferences.

A couple of years ago, when twitter was still very young, Mobile Monday in Amsterdam used a twitter backchannel that was projected behind the speaker. I loved it although I can imagine as a speaker it’s actually less so (especially when people tweet that what you are saying is nonsense or make jokes that make the audience laugh while you have no clue). I started appreciating it even more later when it allowed me to follow conferences while being at my desk in the office, without visiting the conference itself (perfect in combination with a live video feed).

Now at eComm there were several backchannels; of course people used twitter for which I set up a search in tweetdeck, but we also used Google Wave at this conference and a public Skype chat/channel for eComm. I followed them and participated in all.

And man!….was that exhausting. Switching between the channels, reacting, tweeting, listening and watching all at the same time while also making notes on my pc. It was too much!! I had a hard time actually following the people in front of me on stage.

It made me think about the backchannel phenomenon. On the one hand it is great and supplies non-visitors with a way to follow what’s happening but making notes and looking at the backchannel does distract from the most important thing; the presentations / demo’s etc themselves!

Maybe it’s time for a backchannel aggregator to read comments and a automatic transcription of things that are being said and get some time back to actually listen :) I’ll be the first customer!