Big Digital Feet at Custard In The Ether

« Considering Amplification & Resilience | Home | Half Thoughts and Twitter Notes »

Big Digital Feet

By admin | July 7, 2009

How big is the digital footprint of your event? Did it make it onto the trending topics list on Twitter? How many people followed the keynotes via live streaming video? How much of the conversation was captured?

These are the kind of issues that crop up around “amplified” events. I have been to several amplified conference-type events recently, and have been asked to live blog and twitter through a three day event at the end of this month. I have therefore been thinking very hard about what amplification is trying to achieve, and how it can be managed so that it does not prove to be a distraction, but actually enhances participants’ experience of an event.

Online amplification is basically any live, online activity which gives a digital dimension to the proceedings thus enabling remote participation and creating an online record of the event. There are therefore two parallel aims - to generate conversation/interaction and to archive.

Any social networking tools could be used to amplify an event, although some are perhaps more suited to this purpose than others. Twitter is fast becoming the mainstay, but it is by far the be all and end all. Blogs, video streaming, live chat rooms, slide sharing and services such as Cover It Live all have a role to play and can effectively allow multiple entry points to the event so participants can engage through whichever single or combination of services best suit their needs.

But how do you co-ordinate all of this stuff? Should you try to co-ordinate it? And how do you get your flesh participants involved without distracting them?

I would argue that a co-ordinated approach to amplification is really important both to help with the archiving process, but also to help event organisers to respond to issues and improve the event whilst it is in progress. Forget hindsight and irritating satisfaction surveys that only a fraction of participants complete - if there is a problem (not enough plug sockets, a lack of coffee, poor sound etc) these kind of issues can be picked up by organisers monitoring the online activity and put right. After all, we are not talking broadcast media here!

So, how? This is the area still very much under debate and in which I will be experimenting. There are a few recommendations out there: make sure you have a good, short, memorable hash tag and encourage everyone to use it when tagging any comment or online content (such as pictures and blog posts) that they may produce; promote something like the one-tweet initiative, whereby participants are encouraged to tweet at the end of each session with their views or the most significant thing they will take away; bring the digital conversation into the real event wherever possible - usually using something like Twitterfall, or some other visualisation of tagged items which can be projected onto a wall or unused screen.

These are all good ideas - particularly the one-tweet initiative, which I first came across at the #nlab event Amplified Individuals and Business Resilience in Leicester. I really liked this idea, as it positively promotes the digital conversation without it causing a distraction. Participating into two levels of interaction at once can be tricky for some people, and this was a very easy, simple way of getting those people involved in both levels without causing stress by demanding that they multitask, making the digital conversation more inclusive and therefore richer.

What I found was lacking at the #nlab event, particularly as an online participant in the morning (I attended the afternoon in person) was a central hub where I could go to find all the conversation and get a real feeling for what it was like to be at the event. It was all pulled together afterwards on the event blog, but not at the time. In fairness, it has to be noted that the focus of the event was Twitter, so most of the conversation was taking place in that space - but this isn’t and shouldn’t be the case for most wider events, as it does not encourage the inclusion of the non-twittering classes.

This is where aggregators have a vital and, as yet, undeveloped role to play, in my opinion. Using tools such as NetVibes or PageFlakes to pull in all the content from all the other tools and to present it in an ergonomic and engaging way seems to me to be a sensible way of co-ordinating and monitoring what is going on around the even online. It also collates everything in one place - making it easier to archive the event and assess the size of its digital footprint. I have seen this done experimentally with mainly text-based RSS feeds, but it is now possible to use hash tags to pull in other kinds of content and therefore create a more media rich space. This brings us, as the remote participant, closer to the real experience without having to follow loads of links to get to the live streaming of one session, the audioboo of a live participant’s reaction, the slideshare file relating to the presentation etc.

It might be just the logical, organised, controlling part of my brain kicking in, but whilst I don’t mind the conversation and event-related objects (such as videos, pictures etc) being “out there”, if I want to collate and use these for practical purposes, or get a complete experience of an event online, I want some kind of hub like this.

One could collect all of these links on an event blog and use this as the hub, but it is hard to make the links and feeds navigable and engaging on a standard blog. A blog kept simple - with a clear link out to an aggregating hub full of live, mixed media content - can of course be a powerful discursive and literary tool which plays a role in the online conversation. However, it is really easy for blogs used as hubs to become cluttered, and standard template designs often don’t allow enough space for widgets displaying live content, making it difficult to follow an event in full.

One solution that I have recently been introduced to is Cover It Live, which allows organisers to create a live, scrollable stream of all the content, together with user polls and other neat things. One of its main strengths is that it can pull in the conversation from Twitter, but also allow non-twitterers to observe and join in. It feels very much like a live minute-taker to me, creating a dynamic timeline of the event which can be very useful both as the event unfolds, and afterwards when curating. This type of tool is starting to tap into the need for a more complete online experience of an event and could be very effective when used in conjunction with other tools.

So, how would I personally co-ordinate an amplified event?

Currently, I am finding NetVibes to be the most useful co-ordination tool out there, but I have by no means yet made an exhaustive search. NetVibes allows me to create tabbed pages with boxes that call up all kinds of media content based on RSS feeds, hash tag searches and static links - including video, audio, images, slideshare etc. I can also embed the Cover It Live commentary (which the event organisers want to use). All of the material can be arranged in a logical, appealing way, giving me (and remote participants) once space to watch everything unfold and to interact. The event blog can then be kept simple and clean - focussing on what a blog is good at doing. Where possible I will try to project visualisations of the related Twitter comments, but this will depend on the facilities at the venue. I will be plugging for the one-tweet initiative to be used to generate feedback as well as further discussion.

There is certainly a lot to think about and a lot of experimenting to be done to get the balance between free, unbridled conversation stretching out from your event to create that digital footprint, and managing/collating all that amplified content to help it enhance the experience and lasting impact of the event. One thing is for sure: this new dimension will continue to change the way we experience conferences and organised events in the future, so we’re in exciting, experimental times!

Topics: internet, nlab, social networks, twitter |

2 Responses to “Big Digital Feet”

Marieke Guy Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Hi Kirsty,

Great post and we are really looking forward to have you help us with amplifying our conference (the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2009)!

I’ve written quite a bit on amplified conferences on my blog and am definitely starting to look at people’s approaches in a more critical manner. In the past it was anything is a bonus but now people are beginning to expect a level of quality.

OK I may be shooting myself in the foot here as I’m rolling out a conference later this month, but here are a couple of faux pas I noted at recent events. I won’t mention the event name to spare people’s embarrassment.;-)

At a recent event I attended there was a lot of problems with the hashtag. The first attempt at a tag resulted in a slightly rude acronym, which was then changed. The second attempt had a hyphen in, which didn’t work in Twitter so that was abandoned too. The end result was that presenters had different tags on their slides and people were confused about the tag. It wasn’t too much of a problem though as the wifi was so bad very few people twittered anyway!

At another event I tuned in to remotely there was a bit of a problem with the main camera for video streaming. People kept walking in front of it! The second camera gave a side view of the lectern - not very flattering! None of the views showed the slides so there were real problems understanding what people were talking about.

Anyway just something we could learn from…as you say there is still a lot of experimenting to be done.

Marieke
Amplify Your Event – make it happen Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
[…] some potential answers to these questions, read more here: Big Digital Feet This entry was written by Christine, posted on 8 July 2009 at 8:49 am, filed under Tips & […]

Big Digital Feet

2 Responses to “Big Digital Feet”

Comments

Custard Thinks About:

Recent Blog Posts:

Archive:

Subscribe to Custard:

Twitter Update:

Contact: