I’m in a beautiful room with 50 people smarter than me. We’re sitting in a four concentric half-circle rows, all pointing at the hub. Three people are at the hub, staging a panel discussion. This is an extremely informal group. Over the past three years, the conference has gotten more formal because it — properly, IMO — started at an extreme of conversational anarchy. Each year we better understand what limits will be helpful.

This year, the organizer required all atatendees to arrive with a laptop and an 802.11 Wifi card so we can all participate in an online chat even while presentations are going on. The conversations are posted on a large ooh-I-want-one plasma screen at the front.

I’ve been interested in the way the online conversation organizes itself. Here’s what’s the chat room been used for:

Competitive speed posting of links related to whatever the speaker has just said.

Wise cracks.

Questions about what the speaker has just said, e.g., what’s that acronym?

Digressive discussions.

Occasional challenges to what the speaker is saying, usually with no followups from anyone, as if criticizing the speaker were bad form (as it probably is).

It was as distracting as having a news crawl at the bottom of the screen as the news reader is talking about some event. But in this case the distraction was directly related to what’s being said on the main stage.

It’s been a worthwhile experiment. I noticed a change during the times the big screen was down. Talk got looser. Knowing that everyone in the room is going to hear your wise cracks inhibits the wise cracks (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Next time, I’d vote for keeping the chat board but taking down the screen; comments from the back of the room are more valuable if they stay in the back.

Categories: Uncategorized dw