Tag Archives: participation

Building a better conference

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The updated blog posts on my bloglines account have been going crazy today and I’ve been reading with interest Michele Martin’s post on better conferences (http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog/2007/06/conferencing-20.html).  This is exactly the kind of thing that I’ve been thinking about with the Hub conferences in mind, two of the suggestions have particularly caught my eye, practical demos and cheat sheets.

Web-Enable the Conference and Provide Attendees with Cheat Sheets Ahead of Time
Liveblogging, Twitter, Skypecasting, Flickr photos, etc.–these are all tools that are beginning to enliven and engage conference-goers. But not everyone knows how to use them or how to use them at a conference. One “value-add” for pre-conferencing might be to provide conference goers with instructions and ideas on how they can get the most from the conference through these tools. Give them instructions on how to set up a blog or sign up for a Flickr account. (You can create quick screencasts for this if you want). Give them examples of how others have used these tools at conferences. Help “newbies” figure out how to use these tools of personal learning, which will enable them to get the most out of the conference.

How many people are really using new media technologies?

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I’m not really in the blogging mood today after a run in with some nasty shell fish but I’m determined to soldier on.

I was interested to read the latest post from Miles @ Lasa on how many people are actually actively involved in web 2.0.

“However, the latest data on Internet participation reveals that [whilst many sites such as MySpace and Facebook are reporting increased traffic] only a very small percentage of Internet activity is related to users creating and publishing content.

“According to Hitwise, only 0.2% of visits to YouTube are users uploading a video, 0.05% visits to Google Video include uploaded videos and 0.16% of Flickr visits are people posting photos. Only the social encyclopedia Wikipedia shows a significant amount of participation, with 4.56% of visits to the site resulting in content editing.”

It’s easy to think that because we talk about these new technologies all the time then everyone must be doing it but the numbers don’t seem to reflect that.  It’s certainly something I intent to keep in mind when planning my events this year – the need to focus on the the basics, why are people getting involved in new media, not just launching straight in to the how.