Netpositive

I hung out on the Freenode IRC channels at both Etech and SxSW. While you can argue that the running chat commentary is a distraction from the main presentations, for the most part it enhanced the experience for me. Here’s why:

• It added much needed comic relief from many of the too serious presentations. Come on presenters, lighten up!
• Smart people filled in the gaps of the content with sidenotes, related URIs, caveats, etc. Sometimes this info was richer than that on the slides. Smart mob!
• A great way to meet new people! Okay, maybe not. It was the usual crowd of suspects, but that’s not such a bad thing.
• The memorable lines are celebrated and memorialized. Particularly in the keynotes, some diligent backchannel lurkers would emphasize the really good ad hoc lines (Heather Armstrong: “live the content”; Mena Trott: “Bloggers are stupid”). In backchannel 2.0 I’d expect t-shirts with these phrases by the end of the presentation.
• We are able to razz poorly prepared, cliche-prone or uninspired presenters…behind their back (or behind their channel, or whatever). It’s cruel–a throwback to junior high, perhaps–but so satisfying. A revenge of the nerds?

Here’s a few more observations. Etech averaged close to 100 users on the freenode channel, while sxswi had under 20. The sxsw chats were consequently quite a bit thinner.

Tantek made the observation that  a high volume of chatter is usually a sign that the presentation is not going so well. But in the case of Tom Coates’ etech presentation the intense volume was a direct result of our fawning.

Finally, Stamen design created this neato visualization for the IRC backchannel, which had us all aflutter. It’s just too bad they don’t archive the conference chats.

This entry was posted Monday, March 20th, 2006 at 10:56 am and is filed under Random. Both comments and pings are currently closed.