It's all about the learning and insomnia

May 2010

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Last night or rather very early this morning, I could not sleep and started thinking about my to do list and all the new ideas I jotted down in my moleskin while on vacation ... Somewhere between the soothing visit Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, Falling Water, and the shock therapy of monster trucks I began to think about collaborative note capture at conferences using Web2.0 tools ...

So I scribled down some patterns related to blogging, tagging, photostreams, and wikis. Nancy White bounced some more ideas on this topic here, with an even grander synthesis:

It is about the Learning!

In the end, the key around these practices is that when we engage all or part of the group in the production of our "learning artifacts" -- we all learn more AND we make some of that learning available to others. The act of production is an act of meaning making.

We also think beyond our individual selves. We resume responsibility not only for our participation, but for sharing back to the communities we come in to the room representing. F2F is a precious resource, not to be squandered. It is a privilege.

That's the bottom line.

I agree.

Her additional points about the use of Chat/IRC, Videocasts, VOIPcasts, Podcasts, and Visual Facilitation spurred some additional reflections (boy I feel a writely document coming on ...) and want to document here.

"Back Channel" or Chat/IRC - I've put myself on both sides of this back channel experience and have obsessed a little bit about it. Sometimes the "channel" can be a wall and other times it can be a bridge. There needs to be a moderator in the room who can weave face-to-face participants with those on the IRC/Chat. This makes those on the IRC feel as those they've been "listened to." The best technique I've seen was at the Global s Summit in London -- where there was a "Chat /IRC Advocate" in the room who monitored the chat/IRC and asked questions on behalf the chat paticipants and typed in the answers.

At a recent Net Tuesday event with the founders of Gabbly, a chat client, there was a remote chat available. Britt Bravo served as the faciliator taking live notes of the in-room presentation.

I think this approach is better for people in the room because reading a chat interface projected onto a screen can be distracting to those in the room and even cause a kerfluflle (sic) a la Les Blogs

Another way to involve remote participate is to set up a remote tracks using speakers and facilitators who are the live event. This was done quite successfully at netsquared conference.

VideoCasts/Skypecasts: I agree with Nancy's thoughts here. I would add that I loved the way that netsquared did the video posts from the conference. Keep in mind, these vlog posts were done by veteran vloggers. And if you happen to have access to video conferencing, like we did at the Global s London Summit which took place at Reuters headquarters, we had participants from across the pond who participated this way.

Podcasts: I didn't attend the Northern s Conference, but I really wanted to hear Nancy's presentation. I'm so glad that Alan Levine did the audio and the ad hoc collaboration from Beverly, Nick Noakes and others to remix Nancy's jpgs and Alan's audio was superb. It made me wish that every conference was this well documented ... I wouldn't need to find any babysitters! I wonder, though, could this type of collaboration been "organized" or "pre-planned" -- given that it was at a blogging conference with people with the tech skills and equipment it happened ad hoc, like magic.

(Chris, you said you were gonna write more about this topic and I would love to hear your thoughts about podcasting in this context)

This is a shout out to other readers/colleagues who want to think together more on this topic ... send a track back, leave a comment, or play in the writely play pen.