As I attend more and more conferences explaining the effect Social Media is having on education, the subject of Back Channeling often comes up. Educators at conferences are beginning to accept the fact that it is okay for audience members to twitter out to their followers the statements of the presenter as well as their own impressions of the speaker and topic. As I explained this to a number of people at a conference this week, I remembered the first post I did on this very subject way back on November 25, 2009. This is the guest Blog post I did on my good friend Shelly Terrell’s Blog. (BTW, I no longer have a blackberry.)
I am on a flight returning home after a successful Presentation at the New York State Association of Computers and Technologies in Education Annual Conference, NYSCATE. I was pleased with the outcome, but I did make a few observations about how presenting at these conferences is beginning to change and may never be the same.
Presentations for any educational conference are the backbone of the conference. They are usually the main reason why educators attend conferences, wild parties notwithstanding. It is a great accomplishment for an educator to have a proposal for a conference presentation accepted and placed on the Program. Being judged and accepted by one’s colleagues is both an accomplishment and a thrill and for some, the process could also be terrifying. Presenting is considered by many to be one of those thresholds in an educator’s career. I have done several presentations at various conferences over the years and I have been moved by the positive experience with each event. Because it requires putting one’s self out there for all to see, most presenters do a great job of preparing and presenting to the best of their ability.
There has recently come a change for presenters that I just became aware of with my recent experience. I was at a keynote speech by David Jakes. He made a huge impression with his introduction to Augmented Reality. It was very cool. Jakes was engaging and informative, everything we have come to expect from a keynote speaker. He could have smiled more, but otherwise he was great. During his speech my Blackberry gonged. This was not a notification that an angel got her wings, but an alert that a message arrived. As I took out the Blackberry to turn off the sound, I thought I would sneak a peek at Ubertwitter. Twitterers understand the call of the stream.
I was amazed to find ten tweets about the very keynote speech I was watching. I could not believe how rude these audience members could be tweeting during a speech. I immediately tweeted out to these people. If they could be rude, I should be allowed to be rude too. I sent out about five tweets. Jakes received rave reviews from all the tweeters present. He deserved it, because he was excellent. I came away inspired by Jakes and terrified by Twitter.
The terror came in the fact that the next day I had to present my PLN Presentation and I knew many of those same tweeters would be in my room. I attended a panel discussion the next morning and there were over a hundred people in attendance. The Panel was again excellent and again several tweets went out saying so. In addition Tweeters were quoting the pearls of wisdom from the panelists, word for word. I had two hours to go and no pearls of wisdom from me were even on the horizon.
The idea of a Twitter test entered my mind and now I had another standard to meet. Not only did the presentation have to be accepted by educators in general, but it needed to be accepted by Tweeters specifically. In my mind’s eye I envisioned my three thousand followers opening their Twitterstream and seeing a tweet “Whitby sucks in Real time” or worse “RT: Whitby sucks in Real time” GLOBAL sounded in my brain. Even Europe, Asia, and Australia will know I suck in real-time.
I showed up in my room early and of course, the technology that we tweet about all the time, let me down. The computer screen appeared sideways and it was the same on the projection screen as well. A frantic call to the tech folks scrambled three techs to the room. Any more than one is a problem, since there is not one opinion but three to resolve the problem of the sideways screen. I am a dead man in the eyes of the world. It was time to start, and I could not wait for the fix, so I began the presentation. Shortly after my introduction, the techies came through and the projector and computer were up and running with a picture in the correct orientation.
Somehow I managed to conceal my fears until this public outing in this Blog. The point that I think needs to be made, however, is that twitter, or whatever app is to follow, will forever change the way we receive Presentations. Hopefully, Twitter will force us all to do better or be exposed globally. A real concern is what about those twitterers who don’t get it and tweet out bad stuff about the speaker with little regard for reason or feelings. Twitter will have a significant effect on presenters and presentations. Maybe we should ban it?
My Island View 
Did you really just use the “B” word?!?! lol
I think with anything there is room for abuse. But I also think that when people can see and know about your flaws, it makes you more human. When you are more human, people think they can do what you do, it empowers them. Granted, sometimes those forces are used for evil, but overall I think people will TRY more because they realize that even the great Tom Whitby sometimes has a tech time in real time 🙂
Just my thoughts…
I love reading the tweets from conferences. These tweets lead me to discover so many exciting speakers, ideas and resources that I find them invaluable. Sometimes, I feel a part of a conference even though it’s on the other side of the world!
I understand what you’re feeling in terms of rude people making negative comments. Unfortunately, there are always going to be people like that… whether they send their message via a blog post, vodcast, comment in a blog… they’ll find a way to make their opinion heard…
All i can say… is that the majority of people who read those comments also see the good ones and we’re usually bright enough to work out who to ignore and who to follow 😉
There will always be rude, negative people in the world. I guess we could try and teach them some manners but I suspect that selective “hearing” might be the best approach!
My experience with back channel conversations during presentations has been positive. Good presentations can be better as people embellish and questions what the speaker has to say. My main problems with conferences is that presentations are too long and with concurrent sessions you have to miss a lot. The 140 conference model where you have one room and presentations of 10 to 15 minutes is superior and builds on the TED talks idea of short and powerful presentations that are also PowerPoint free. The idea of banning back channels reminds me of schools that ban social media rather then try to figure out how to leverage it to the advantage of the students.
Thanks for opening up this discussion. I enjoy tweeting during conferences as it broadens and deepens my understanding of the speakers’ main points. Yes, and I fear naysayers’ comments when I present too. What is the etiquette related to this? My personal etiquette is to tweet if it broadens my understanding of the content/presentation, to give credit to the speaker for his/her comments, to document main points for later reflection and writing, and to question points/methods I might not agree with, rather than write a negative/condescending message. I’m curious about others’ etiquette w/regard to this topic. Thanks again.
I’d never considered the downsides of using a backchannel as a teacher or presenter. Twitter is such a public forum that it’s important for me to stay professional, generous, and helpful. Negativity, whether tweeted or spoken, adds no value to any conversation. If I read “@tomwhitby sucks” I’d be more apt to dismiss the tweeter than I would take that kind of comment seriously.
I like your words, Jenny. “Professional, generous and helpful.” Great professional guidelines.
Ban it? You’re kidding. But, a good sense of humor is important in a keynoter, too 🙂
The Twitter horse is long out of the barn, Tom. Or, maybe more appropriately, Pandora’s Twitter is out of the box, loosed everywhere.
It’s now a world of spinners and twisters and twitterers, never to be what it once was.
Cheers,
Tom
Tom,
I love your point about social media never justifying rudeness. I think technology has a way of increasing a libertarian perspective in us. We need to play nice and remember how we would feel if those same tweets were directed at us.
Thanks!
Pat Paris
Very thoughtful post and comments! I agree that the backchannel isn’t going back in Pandora’s Box and don’t think that a bad thing at all. When done well, it adds to the class/session/discussion. Like pencil-scrawled notes and bathroom graffiti, the negative and unproductive comments can and will happen (I recall it being B-A-D at an ISTE keynote last year) and it is on the shoulders of the community to respond appropriately.
I wonder how many of you have seen this http://www.ted.com/talks/gel_gotta_share.html which was shared at our SchoolNet South Africa conference by Naomi Harm (@nharm from Minnesota) last week. Naomi and the other keynote presenters, John Davitt and Jane Hart, generously shared all their resources with the 500 teachers present. Yes we had the Twitter back channel but what struck me as having changed about presenting was that these proficient speakers happily and spontaneously adapted their content as their presentatoins progressed to accommodate delegates and the other speakers around them and what they were adding to their presentations. Truly remarkable and impromptu sharing.
[…] via Twitter’s Effect on Presentations & Presenters « My Island View. […]
What I find interesting is that several speakers that I have heard recently have been talking in tweetable chunks, deliberately dropping in pat phrases and sentences that the audience can readily pick up on and send forth. That is troubling as the content of presentations (yes maybe as relevant as the lecture these days) is dumbed down or chunked up in the service of a marketing tool. Listen to the social media savvy presenter you next hear and as you watch the twitter stream see the catch phrases that emerge (over and over) and ask yourself what has been gained and what has been lost.
PS – don’t get me wrong here, I love twitter and constantly use it – but how much do we want the media to be the message?
[…] was nicely juxtaposed next to a tweet from @bronst on a comment she had made on @tomwhitby’s post on Twitter at conferences. These two articles connected a few dots in my thinking about the role of […]
[…] A few years back I spoke at a conference and experienced first hand what a backchannel was. Twitter is probably the best tool to do it. I did write a post on that experience back in November of 2009 and later reposted on my blog, Twitter’s Effect on Presentations and Presenters. […]
[…] A few years back I spoke at a conference and experienced first hand what a backchannel was. Twitter is probably the best tool to do it. I did write a post on that experience back in November of 2009 and later reposted on my blog, Twitter’s Effect on Presentations and Presenters. […]