Thoughts on How Conferences Might Best Meet the Needs of Delegates
By Paul McMahon on Mar 31, 2009 in Educational Conferences and tagged 21clearnhk09 backchannel Conference texting
I put a post up late last year when a group of educators in my PLN started a discussion about the etiquette of concentrating on the backchannel when a keynote is being delivered at a conference.
I see that Jeff Utecht and David Warlick have both commented about not getting much from conferences if this element is missing. One thing I would point out is that Jeff and David are not your normal conference attendees and both would probably give more than they got from the sessions at a conference. That said, it is a well made point and one that we want to address in September for the 21st C Learning conference.
Some thoughts spring to mind. The first is to raise the bandwidth issues of having so many potential users of the wireless network in one place. This is something that may be hard to get right as it is hard to test 500 people in the one place until they are all there. Rest assured we will raise the issue. I guess this is one area where a school venue has it over a resort hotel in KKB.
The other thought is preparing the workshop presenters for this sort of thing. I have put some notes together already for the call for papers which, like everything else is on hold till the venue issue is sorted but I will go back and make sure that they say a lot about allowing interaction with the participants via backchannel as well as F2F.
Any comments and suggestions are, as always, welcomed.
7 Comment(s)
Just curious — you mentioned preparing the workshop presenters for the idea of a backchannel chat. What / how would you go about this? And why would they need to be prepared for this? To my mind, the workshop presenter needs to prepare very little for a backchannel to exist. Unless, of course the presenter is really operating more like a traditional presenter (rather than a facilitator) and not expecting his/her participants to actually participate.
Thanks for the very prompt and thoughtful reply Adrienne.
You are right in what you say. I guess that what I need to make clear in the notes to presenters is that we are hoping that the workshops will be sessions where the leader is a facilitator. I have not had the benefit of many conferences over the last few years but I have been to a fair share of workshops where the leader presented content with the assistance of just Powerpoint and did not even use Google presentation to allow for commenting.
I have to also say that the majority of International Schools in Hong Kong still do not give staff a laptop so it is not the “tool of trade” that it is seen to be in the bigger International Schools. This will mean that quite a few teachers at the conference are unlikely to have a laptop with them.
Keep the comments coming, they really help with my thinking and planning.
Paul
We did this last year at the Learning 2.008 conference. Part of the contract that all presenters signed stated that we had the right to video or audio record their sessions. None of them seems to mind.
Jeff
Very timely comment Jeff.
I think if I a explicit right from the call for presenters then there can’t really be an dissenters.
Schools here have been buying up big on the Creative Vado Cameras and I have a bank of them that I use for workshops so it should be easy to capture a lot of the presentations and share them. The Vados have a bigger screen than the Flip and are available locally for around US$90 so they are popular with classes. Much easier to get your hands on them than the Flip and they have the same USB easy download.
All good food for thought. As soon as I can get a firm agreement on the venue I am good to go.
Paul
this is a great idea!
Thanks so much for all the giveaways!
One more thought, Paul – even if schools in HK aren’t giving their teachers laptops, wouldn’t many teachers have their own that they would bring?
My school issues me a laptop, but I prefer my own anyway (probably ’cause it’s a Mac!).
Sorry Adrienne,
I somehow missed this and did not reply immediately.
You make a good point. We are working on the website and some posters now and I think we need to make it clear from the outset that this is an online and offline conference together and this will encourage them to bring them along.
Paul