{"id":231,"date":"2008-10-26T20:42:27","date_gmt":"2008-10-26T20:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dgen.net\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/10\/26\/virtual-conferencing-at\/"},"modified":"2008-10-26T20:46:03","modified_gmt":"2008-10-26T20:46:03","slug":"virtual-conferencing-at","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/2008\/10\/26\/virtual-conferencing-at\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtual conferencing at HEAD conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HEAD<\/p>\n

I presented at <head><\/a> at the London Hub (in person) on Friday, and today online (from home). I wanted to capture some of my thoughts immediately before I forget:<\/p>\n

This is the first time I believe I’ve seen what I’d call true p2p broadcasting<\/strong>.\u00a0 Perhaps a coming of age.<\/p>\n

Having spent (too) many years webcasting<\/a> everything from Glastonbury to conferences to Parliament, I have to say that this went very well. I started doing “webcast chats” at Virgin Net in 1996, which worked – and helped me learn how to mash up broadcasting with chat rooms – but the video was still “one-way”. The distributed-source nature of HEAD really changed this context.<\/p>\n

As a presenter, I found the experience relatively seamless*. The great benefits of presenting from home included;<\/p>\n

– not having to travel the venue, hang around, and travel back.<\/p>\n

This is a vast benefit. It’s very low stress, even travelling across London is stressful. No (\/minimal) missing out on family time at weekends.<\/p>\n

– No CO2 footprint.<\/p>\n

– No \u00a3cost.<\/p>\n

The negative bits? Missing out on serendipity.\u00a0 This was mitigated, in part, by the Hubs – which is a great idea – and the chat room. It actually felt a bit more<\/strong> human than standing on a stage.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed this more than most conferences I’ve spoken at, and had more (and better) questions via the chat room. I also felt much more comfortable stopping “presenting” and actually listening to the questions. Maybe physical conferences should present the back-channel to the presenter on their tele-prompt?<\/p>\n

The distributed nature of the presenters coming into the video stream really helped to create a feel of community. Being able to jump between rooms was also very handy.<\/p>\n

Things that would make it better;<\/p>\n

1) As a presenter, being able to see and\/or hear the viewers; somehow. I’m not sure how. More emoticons, a “sucks more\/less” slider? This would really help with gauging feedback. Put pressure on your presenters to be better – this can only be a good thing.<\/p>\n

2) As both audience and presenter – a cross-room chat back-channel. I’d love to see the chatter from other presentations to see if there were points of serendipity I could pull out (while presenting). As an audience member I’d like to see all the chats.<\/p>\n

3) Better software* integration to manage my view vs everyone else’s view and how it can be customised.<\/p>\n

4) Presenter’s need to be retrained – this will take time. Aral made a training video, which was great, but we need to extend this to a whole new “stage” (e.g. getting good lighting, decent cams, etc.). I hooked up 2 webcams so I could jump-cut but manage it well while speaking – but I have a motorised cam, so could have given position control to the audience.<\/p>\n

In summary, this was a great experience (especially for a first conference) and one I’d definitely repeat.<\/p>\n

I also estimate that this approach saved between 1,000 and 5,000 tonnes of CO2.<\/p>\n

Well done to Aral and the whole HEAD team.<\/p>\n

*Adobe still have a huge amount of work to do to get it right (there were some pretty basic features missing from the online app).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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