[CC licensed image by Greg Gladman]
Danah Boyd’s story of her painful experience with a (projected) presentation backchannel have generated a lot of feedback. As you might expect, some of the commentary has been more thoughtful than others. Some has been rather overblown, falling into the "Bad! No, good! No, bad!" kind of exchange that gets us precisely nowhere (and is, in any case, not doing Danah’s thoughtful post any favors).
What I hope can come from this is some renewed attention to a perennial theme in the blogging, twittering and hallway conversations of those who attend or promote educational conferences: transforming the conference presentation model from narrating PowerPoint slide shows to… well, something else (see end note). There’s been a lot of talk about how horrible many presentations are and much table-pounding and bellowing that something needs to be done, but where can we see any evidence of change? I don’t need all of my digits to number the "presentations" I’ve seen or attended that have subverted the standard model to a significant degree, coming from the likes of Nancy White (visual facilitation), Dave Cormier (you make the slides), Alan Levine (campfire storytelling), and Brian Lamb (DJ extravaganza).
This isn’t easy stuff. It’s a lot easier to talk about transformation than to engage in it. I’ve used backchannels– projected and not– as well as live wikis and chat rooms, visual facilitation, and U-Stream + Twitter combinations… and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. In the end I, like many, essentially conform to expectations and work to achieve a passable result in the limited time I’m willing to give to presentations where all that’s expected is something "acceptable."
But even if I could– and did– go completely crazy and figure out something new, creative, and engaging, do those putting on the events want the result? Will they provide for the "extra" needs some of these methods might require? Will my proposal even make it past the check box stage of the submission process when I can’t honestly choose presentation, panel or round table?
And how about the audience? It’s often been my experience that those in the audience are– like many students– uncomfortable when challenged by a "presentation" to engage and participate rather than sit back and passively receive (at best). Will they– most thinking at least as much of what they are going to do at the end of the day as they are the session they are about to attend– choose an offering that sounds out of their normal range of experience and is likely to personally challenge them over the one they can use to check their email while promising themselves they’ll download the slides later? And even if the audience members’ energy and desire isn’t in question, they are often in the room, or at the conference, because they expect an expert to fill them in on something they don’t already know– or address the nuances and complexity of something they do.
Of course Danah’s experience is confounded by other factors: most obviously the poorly thought-out physical setup, her celebrity, and the nature of the audience at a conference like Web2.0 Expo (the most savage– and funniest– backchannels I’ve ever seen have been at high-functioning geek conferences like O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference). That’s why I’m personally less interested in it as a specific example than I am that it has created a moment in which perhaps we can move past simplistic arguments about what is "good" or "bad" and into how we can move forward to something more interesting and powerful than we typically see at conferences now.
Given the alternative of death by PowerPoint, I’d often prefer a speaker simply pull up a chair and have a conversation with the group. Some of my best conference experiences have been as part of facilitating a conversation. But the richness that’s possible with readily available technology is tantalizing. No matter how well- or ill-considered the implementation, and whether it is made visible or not, the presence of a presentation backchannel indicates a desire to get away from the tired conference-standard. The backchannel should only be a beginning.
NOTE: I’m not discounting the standard conference presentation model entirely. Give me a powerful, highly informed speaker with some stage presence and set the expectation appropriately and I’ll be a happy audience member. But, as with acting or singing or any other kind of performance, not that many people are adept at the performance that is an engaging presentation. And surely no one really believes the routine conference presentation represents the best method for every need?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with your observations and insights here. Backchannel has provided some powerful opportunities to engage and to prod or stoke the presenter. But you’re right: we are still learning about what works, doesn’t work, and how our audience (and speakers) respond to its use.
You’re also right on when you suggest that expectations may differ, and affect outcomes. We are seeing a broader range of presentations now, some where the audience is passive, some where the audience is active. I prefer different styles depending on the topic, the speaker, and (unfortunately) my wildly changing moods and preferences.
Thanks for posting this — I missed it and wouldn’t have heard about it without your post. Michael Nielsen, in one of the comments on Danah’s post made an interesting observation: “I give a lot of talks at events where the crowd is not especially into twitter (I talk mainly at scientific conferences), and I’ve noticed an interesting thing about the twitter backchannel: how rude or respectful it is depends on whether the audience knows I’m on twitter. If I merely put my twitter user name on the first slide, the back channel tends to be more respectful.”
@Jared Context is king. The part that’s most difficult is not being able to easily assess one the most important determinants (if I can at all): audience expectations, preferences and composition.
@John That’s a good point… and is doubly effective because a Twitter backchannel will be more productive with an audience that is aware of its existence. I make it a practice to have my Twitter username and the conference or session hashtag on an early slide. If I can, I have someone Twitter-jockeying as well.
Chris,
You nail this, it is a difficult topic, and like you said can easily be polarized and simplified as good or bad. But what you’re doing here is framing is far more important, the delineation of what might be happening to the idea of representing more generally, how is the performative act of presenting changing radically—like the way we write, create video, photograph, etc., with this new media, and why would we expect it wouldn’t?
What crazy here is that presentation of ideas and “thought” about the technology is kind of providing another space to push what it is you do in perserson given how much one can already get online. And that is the real interesting part for me, what can you do in person—as an event with some real expectation, power, and a sense of importance of you being there—that actually warrants and demands something new? I’m always struck by cogdog’s presentations as just another space in which he is following a whole series of ideas, experiments, and tinkering that he has been doing all along, but he frames the presentation not only as an occasion for the audience, but a particular demo of his thought process that is often externalized on a technology or story. And, probably like you, I think what is missing fro the worst of presentations, many of which I’ve given, is a clear narrative arc, and sense of detailed framing of what you want your audience to think about when they are done. I think presenting is an art form that has been lost to some degree by a routinized idea of “making the donuts” in academia to get a CV note. But what you frame here is a way of thinking about it as yet another form in this media landscape that needs to be critically thought about, imagined and considered on a case by case basis. And, interestingly enough, it may be my favorite form, because there is nothing better than a great presentation, it’s like a great concert, or play—-the being there can truly matter if it’s done well.
The one thing that strikes me nowadays is the easy crowd is going away. The crowd I’m referring to is the crowd of people who don’t do any professional development outside of conferences. Anything you give them is new to them, and they are not connected, so they are easy.
Everybody now comes to conferences with lots of very current knowledge, acquired through their own PLN. So what are they expecting from keynote presenters? It’s not trivial anymore.
For a bunch of nuts-and-bolts suggestions for alternative conference formats, see: http://treegroup.info/topics/Transformational_Conferences.pdf. Most of the ideas listed there are based on direct person-to-person interaction rather than fancy technology. Cheers.
Google does put out some amazing products but I think they missed the mark with Google Wave. Or maybe I just don’t get it. It seems like a hyped up form of email. I used it for a day and that was about it.