I think the key to effective learning in any “educational setting” is to have people so interested & engaged in what they are doing that even seemingly simple verbal “back-channel” communication amongst those people is actually a WONDERFUL thing, because those involved are engaged in critical thinking & sharing those ideas! Personally I learn gain as much useful information from meeting new people & having seemingly short conversations during attendance at conferences as I do in the formal sessions!

Isn’t it interesting that we as “professionals” in a room at a conference do essentially the same thing the kids do?

The format you choose is key to which interactions you want. The offering of simple things like Ustreaming doesn’t have be included in the live portion. It’s simply a courtesy and I’ve used it with the understanding that I won’t be able to interact and they are on their own. It’s not necessary to bring them in. However, if well designed, that could work.

As for the economics of this, I think it only helps to expose a conference as one that you may want to attend. It can be a great marketing tool.

Have every conference convener read Naked Conversations. (I wonder if this comment gets blocked because of that word ;-))

At any rate, this discussion has made me think a great deal more about my own preferences as a presenter, and how those apparently impact my behavior as a participant. I probably shouldn’t assume that all presenters feel the way I do. Epiphany…

My concern was only with requiring a specific form of participation. Even those who appear to be silent and unengaged may be actively thinking about the session and internally making links and connections. Sometimes that isn’t made visible until much later, but those people would be left out if a conference required “Type A” web 2.0 live publishing.

My own conference style has changed dramatically through the years - I started out being a prolific liveblogger, then a recapper, and now I only take occasional notes in my moleskine, preferring to take advantage of the face-to-face time for discussion. To each their own.

But here is what REALLY concerns me, and should concern a lot of us…If the ability to ustream and twitter and chatzy, etc is available to all of us who are unable to attend a conference, what would prevent our administrators and school business officers from saying, ‘Why should we PAY for a conference — registration, travel, hotel, substitute, etc.’ when you can get the same information on YOUR time (via archived ustreams or wikis where people can edit the information, etc.). With the layoffs and cut-backs in education no longer on the horizon, but very much here, I can already hear ‘DENIED, DENIED, DENIED’ being said to conference requests.

Your thoughts?

However I’ve also been presenting material to groups that, for whatever reason, just aren’t engaged. Often I think they’re not engaged because they don’t ‘get’ the conversation. That might be my fault as a presenter, but if the back-channel was incorporated, that conversation might compliment, build or kick-start the conversation.

I don’t know how many times during one of my teacher inservice that a single question from one of my higher performing teachers guided the conversation.

I think that when appropriate, the back-channel gives the conversation a dynamic that a room full of sometimes tentative audience might not.

Examples like NV and Educon2.0 really leave me wondering if I’ll ever go to another NECC/November-esque conference again. The power of those conferences (for me, anyways) is in the conversations that occur outside sessions, as oppose to the scripted sessions that make up the actual conference.

And given the onslaught of ISTE spam I’ve been receiving over the last few weeks (seriously — ISTE — give it a rest — I know the URL of your webinar page, and I’ll go there myself if I’m interested, thank you) I’m wondering how much the ISTE folks get it. Seriously — aggressive email marketing in 2008? Get a blog. Really.

I would love to see any of the major conferences embrace more openness, but I don’t think any of them will. As long as people continue to pony up money to attend, there is no incentive to change. These conferences thrive on the buzz around their content. Opening up the actual sessions to allow non-paying people to participate doesn’t give them any ROI. And I get the distinct sense that the people making the final decisions about how these conferences are run are petrified about the consequences of this openness, as they believe that the content is the most valuable thing they offer. In reality, the content is secondary at best; the relationships that arise among attendees is the thing of primary importance.

I’d love to be wrong, and I’d love to see any major conference allow open participation, but I’m not holding my breath. Change will occur when the current conference model is no longer profitable. Until then, things will remain the same.

In the case I described, the presenter’s disclaimer stated that he would not read the comments until after the presentation. I wholly understand this, but the best use of the tool might involve checking the back-channel at least a couple of times throughout the presentation… an amped-up version of checking for understanding, morphed into a checking for what your audience really wants.

Of course, this requires GREAT confidence in your field as a presenter, or at the very least, an ability to relinquish the microphone to the audience, some of whom may have incredibly greater answers to the floor questions being posed.