The backchannel at this year's Museums and the Web (#mw2008) was especially active and important to my experience at the event. Check out some of the ephemeral cast out as a result of the discussion.
Twitter, Flickr, and the Blog feed
More and more folks got addicted to the backchannel feed this year. Thanks to Mike Ellis' OneTag system everyone's tweets got aggregated into one thread via the #mw2008 tag for all to follow at conference.archimuse.com....and elsewhere
- HashTags' look at #mw2008
- Tweet Scan on #mw2008
- Flickr on #mw2008
- Technorati's aggregate of blog posts tagged #mw2008
One of the most exciting aspects of the #mw2008 tag for me was social in nature. By following the people posting on #mw2008 I was able to make TONS of new twitter and flickr friends who are specifically posting on issues and ideas that I care about already (museum folk). In this way the backchannel serves as a new high bandwidth networking tool.
As these tools become a more important method for fully experiencing a conference both live and remotely we will need new ways to visualize the large amount of data and content that is created. Stamen design's visualization of the backchannel at the 2006 ETech conference looks like an interesting first start.
Did any of you fellow mw2008 attendees have any cool backchannel experiences?
One last twitter link...check out your own tweet cloud. Here's mine.
Comments
As someone who wasn't there, I loved the ability to follow the backchannel. Much more useful than reading session descriptions because I could get the key insights. Much more feeling of being there in an intimate chatty way.
I think twitter in particular could be a great way for a conference newbie/wallflower to get socially engaged real-time. One problem with traditional conference backchannels (i.e. hallway conversations, meals, bar time) is how cliquey they can be. As someone who spent her first two years at ASTC and AAM not knowing a soul and having zero shmooz skills (I can't even spell it), I had no clue how to break in and was frustrated by that "alone in the crowd" feeling. Now that I'm on the "inside," I'm still sensitive to how that felt and am always looking for ways to help others have a friendlier entrance to the backchannel.
and the tweet cloud is great! here's mine.
That's a great point. Some conferences these days are even putting your twitter username or avatar picture on the badge. That helps you identify people who have goofy user names like xbryanx or homebrewer (our pal Nate at the walker). Nothing beats the feeling of turning a online friend/colleague into a real one.
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