Quarantined Conferences: Claustrophobic Technophiles or Attentive Audiences?

by Mark Drapeau | @cheeky_geeky | comments: 13

Loren Feldman. 1938 Media. Audience Conference.

That’s about as much of a summary as you’ll find about the Audience Conference held in New York last Friday. That’s because there were no open laptops allowed during the performances. There was also no Wi-Fi, no video streaming, no tweeting, and no blogging. Something akin to omertà joined the members of the Audience Conference together.

This bond of silence was at the core of the Audience Conference, and it goes against everything that technology and Web 2.0 events normally stand for: openness, transparency, and participation. You would be hard-pressed to find any information anywhere on the web about any of the Audience Conference content. Tweets during the event were generic (“just arrived at the Audience Conference”) and posts after the event were vague (“loved the conference, got to meet Calacanis”). Nobody knows what happened unless you were a genuine member of the audience.

Many other features of the event were also unfamiliar. There were no sponsor booths, banners, and signs all over the place, the speakers had no slideshows, internet connections, or videos to keep us interested, and there were no press or even questions from the audience allowed. No problem.

That’s because the content and experience was so damn good. It was technology. It was performance. It was even culinary. Loren Feldman, our MC for the day, treated the event not as a conference so much as a 20-act play that he directed from start to finish. Inside the historic Hudson Theatre in New York, the members of the audience acted like precisely that - an audience. We watched, listened, and learned. We didn’t talk, text, or tweet. We sat in comfortable chairs facing the stage, not at round tables facing at all different angles to it. We retained the information we heard instead of regurgitating it for our own audiences. We learned that the essence of having an audience is performing for them on a stage - perhaps a digital one - and telling great stories.

What was the Audience Conference? From the website: "Audience is a conference aimed at those who recognize the need to reach engage and influence audiences of all kinds, an investigation into how this is changing, and a look at how technology has in the past and is now, through new media tools and the social web, changing audience participation and interaction." I would love to tell you about what I learned from Jason Calacanis and Rachel Marsden and Rae Hoffman and Andrew Keen and Jeremy Schoemaker and Joe Jaffe and Melanie Notkin and others. But I won’t. Half the philosophy of the Audience Conference was that events are ephemeral experiences that people attending can share with each other - and people not there cannot experience.

In my opinion, casually live-tweeting conferences is overrated because to a large degree it doesn’t serve an external audience very well. When 30 people are tweeting 10 times during each of 10 talks at a conference, and then people re-tweet the tweets (on a delay, naturally), the hashtag stream is a jumbled mess of disjointed quotations that don’t tell a coherent story. I’ve written about why I think tools like Posterous might be better for summarizing thoughts from events; they serve the audience better.

That said, I disagree with the notion that everything needs to be live streamed, live blogged, and live tweeted merely because we can. I recently attended a conference that was about the size of the Audience Conference, and I had a fine experience there so there’s no need to call them out. But strange to me in hindsight was that the audience’s tables were arranged at 90 degrees to the stage, and furthermore that nearly everybody at the tables was staring into a laptop nearly the entire event. Who is that a great experience for?

Now, I am not going to start calling for a ban on Twitter at conferences. I do it sometimes when I think it provides unique value and perspective. I’ve live-blogged some events myself. Furthermore, banning these technologies at an event like the upcoming Gov 2.0 Expo would probably result in an all-out revolt. But what Audience Conference taught me was a new perspective on the actual value that all of the technology adds; if you’re planning an event and you’re more worried about power strips and Wi-Fi than content and experience, you’ve got a problem in my opinion.

The comments on Nicole Ferraro’s blog about Audience Conference might lead you to believe that being able to film and tweet from a private, closed door event was some God-given right of Those Who Possess An iPhone. Sorry, it’s not. Loren Feldman took video of the entire event from six different angles (including a small cam pointed at, you guessed it, the audience) and he will decide how and what and when you get to see anything. Why not? It’s his show, not yours. Can you stream video from a live production of Wicked?

The other half of the philosophy of the Audience Conference was that it’s okay that people are better than you at something. And it’s perfectly alright to just sit back and watch them perform. And we watched performances, to be sure - not just tech talks but also personal stories, poetry readings, and musical acts. (Yeah, musical acts.) Not everyone is good enough to be the best financial blogger, or best personality, or best musical act - that’s a dream. Maybe you’re great at something, but can’t you sit back and relax the rest of the time?

I liked this too. With all the talk about how everyone is a citizen journalist and everyone is a content producer and everyone needs a digital media strategy it’s easy to forget that most people are horrible at all of this stuff. And that’s not necessarily because people don’t understand whatever shiny object has come along, it’s because many people are not gifted communicators. New media, at its core, is old-fashioned because the instinct to communicate with other individuals predates man. But some are way better than others at it. And that’s okay.

So are quarantined conferences more likely to result in claustrophobic technophiles or attentive audiences? While some in the tech community clearly think that a lack of engagement is a violation of some imaginary social media code and in an age where even live music isn’t sacred it may seem like heresy to sequester people participating in your event away from their new media toolbox. And maybe sometimes it is. But having experienced the Audience Conference myself, I can also say that in some situations people are not entitled to break out the social media toolbox, because they will genuinely gain a more valuable experience without it. In my opinion, if one event wants to encourage new media use and another discourages it, who are we to argue? We’re only the audience.

What do you think? Were people at the Audience Conference correct to obey Loren Feldman’s requests? Should they deliberately continue “hiding” the content of the event from people that chose not to attend? Should other Web 2.0 events disallow Web 2.0 usage in real time??

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A More Public Role for Public Broadcasting: Education

by Dale Dougherty | @dalepd | comments: 17

Imagine a broadcast network in America that was dedicated to education, where the best educators had the opportunity to produce its programming, and where individuals as well as institutions could develop a new genre of wide-ranging educational programs? Educational programming could elevate the role of teaching in our culture and promote the value of lifelong learning. This blog post explores why education is a more important role for public broadcasting in America, a new role that would re-align PBS with its original mission as an educational network.

Our public broadcasting system should re-invent itself as a network for educational programming. Moreover, it should specifically focus on increasing public interest and engagement in science and civics. This is a vital public mission -- promoting science and technology literacy and creating a greater understanding of our own system of government.

Even in an age of YouTube, broadcast television has the ability to reach even those people who don't have ready access to the Internet. Television is a lowest common denominator, technologically speaking, and so it serves nearly everyone. That's why we should still care that some portion of broadcasting be allocated to serving a public good.

With digital TV, PBS stations now have four channels, which mostly run traditional programs at different times. The new capacity is not being effectively utilized for new programming. One if not two of these new channels should be dedicated to serving a public educational mission. And there are lessons to be learned from the Internet in how to produce new educational programming for these channels.

PBS is a network of independent affiliates, who are much more independent than their commercial counterparts. This somewhat fragmented network structure can be positive, if it strikes a healthy balance between national and local or regional programming. It's important that a good portion of this educational programming be locally targeted, perhaps in conjunction with local colleges and other educational institutions.

Educational Broadcasting in America

Our nation's founders recognized that an educated public was crucial to the sustainability of American democracy, which led to public funding of education. Today, education happens in the media as well as in school. It is important that we use the media of television, in combination with new media, to support educational goals. There is even greater opportunity to combine a public broadcasting network and the interactive capabilities of the Internet to create a new hybrid framework for lifelong education.

The American public broadcasting system began when President John Kennedy authorized the first funding for the build-out of a national educational broadcasting network in 1962. Then in 1967 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act, which authorized the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), he said the bill would give a "stronger voice to educational public radio and television." He added:

So today we rededicate a part of the airwaves--which belong to all the people--and we dedicate them for the enlightenment of all the people.

Johnson made the analogy to land-grant universities and the setting aside of land for public use. It is the notion of a commons, not controlled by commercial interests, that is available to serve the broader goal of educating the public. In its early days, statewide educational networks broadcast lectures into schools across the state. (I remember taking a math class in 7th grade in Kentucky in which the instructor came to us via a TV monitor.)

It's time to re-invent public broadcasting system as a plaform for innovation (to borrow Tim O'Reilly's framing of Government 2.0). It needs to be an open platform that encourages varied uses by the greater community, ones that frankly we can't even imagine today. It should also be a platform that integrates the Internet and takes advantage of community-building that is possible online.

Re-defining the Educational Network

The public broadcasting service can provide the forum for educating Americans of all ages and backgrounds. There are many sources of content for programming. Here are some ideas for this educational network:

1. Identify great high school teachers and give them a new forum for reaching a broader audience. Let us see what good teacher do and let more people learn from them.
2. Work with universities, many of whom are already providing open courseware. How can broadcast television increase usage of open courses?
3. Adapt presentations from conferences and public forums where speakers present on a range of important topics -- a scientific summit on climate change, for instance.
4. Use television to present short excerpts of educational content that can be explored in full online.
5. Explore new tools for presenting complex information such as Al Gore used in his Inconvenient Truth presentation.
6. Create a "live" national forum that showcases invited speakers on a wide range of subjects of national interest.
7. Encourage the audience to participate via Twitter, perhaps even displaying a stream of the tweets live on the broadcast.
8. Do more with less. Choose lightweight production methods and produce more content rather than placing big bets on large-budget productions.
9. Promote in-person learning opportunities in the local community as well as those online.
10. Shine a light on education itself, and examine in detail various programs and initiatives.

Science Programming

Science is a national priority and it deserves greater coverage on public broadcasting. (We don't need heavily produced video magazines on science.) Science is not just a subject but a way of thinking, which can be learned and applied by anyone. This is the goal of science literacy -- understanding how to apply evidence-based thinking across a wide range of subjects. An educational network should explore important societal issues from a scientific perspective. Economics, neuroscience, medical and health issues, and energy are some of the topics that could be covered regularly.

Civics Programming

Civics is about educating citizens. According to Wikipedia, civics is "the study of government with attention to the role of citizens in the operation and oversight of government." The educational network could help us understand our system of governance, which is not the same as politics. As a rule, the educational network should avoid standard political fare, particularly the coverage of elections. Is there another view of government, which is not covered in the news? Is there an opportunity to go beyond journalism in covering government? I'd like to hear more directly from a variety of government officials who might discuss their priorities and explain the decisions they are making and how they reached those decisions.

Civics programming can tell the story of how American governs itself -- at local, state, regional and federal levels. More people need to be involved in telling that story and it's a story that deserves a larger audience. The Internet can be used to encourage more participation.

A program schedule could feature extended coverage on issues like foreign policy, defense, transportation, defense, health care and social service. Sadly, we know more about sports teams than we do the State Department. We catch glimpses of a war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Public affairs programming on TV has diminished in America and some of it was so uninspired that it deserved to go. Yet isn't public affairs worth doing on TV and can't we come up with new ways to do it well?

In View of All Citizens

In his speech introducing the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967, President Lyndon Johnson said:

At its best, public television would help make our Nation a replica of the old Greek marketplace, where public affairs took place in view of all the citizens. But in weak or even in irresponsible hands, it could generate controversy without understanding; it could mislead as well as teach; it could appeal to passions rather than to reason.

Can we reinvent our public broadcasting service and bring education into the media marketplace, in view of all citizens? I believe a public broadcasting service can help make education an even higher national priority and contribute to creating a more educated and engaged public.

Social Science Moves from Academia to the Corporation

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | @jmichele | comments: 4

This is the latest of a series of posts addressing questions regarding social technologies. Previous posts: The Evangelist Fallacy, Captivity of the Commons and The Digital Panopticon. These topics will be opened to live discussion in an upcoming webcast on May 27 with a special guest to be announced.

In order to control a thing you must first classify a thing -- and we are seeing a massive classification of social behavior. While that classification falls under the guise of making life easier (targeted ads, locating a nearby pizza joint using your mobile), history tells us that we should be leery of motives and masters of our social data (see Captivity of the Commons).

Social sciences (behavioral psychology, sociology, organizational development), whose historical lack of data and scientific method left them open to ridicule from the “hard” sciences, finally have enough volume of data and analytics and processing power (see Big Data) to make “social” much more scientific. But this time social science is going to be coming to you not courtesy of Princeton, but courtesy of Google. Not through small studies on willing subjects, but through massive multivariate testing and optimization upon (largely) unknowing test subjects. The corporation, in other words, will hold the keys to social science at a level of precision only dreamed of by the academic and state institutions of yore.

This recent New York Times article highlights just how much social science, psychology, and personal data converge when a credit card company wants its debts repaid (via Andy Oram’s Radar post).

Should we be concerned about this shift from academia to the corporation?

I hold the current structure of government and corporations in equal regard in terms of how well they adhere to Google’s maxim, “Don’t be Evil.” So in some regard, I shouldn’t really be troubled that social science has moved from academia (which has often been a handmaiden of government) to the corporation (which really just wants to understand what moves you to click that “buy” button, or bump up your average order size by $10, etc.). Except…

Except if you believe that consumer culture is wreaking havoc upon the systems that support life and that the application of social science on behalf of the corporation is intended to simply turbo charge the status quo...

We find ourselves in 2009 facing deep, structural challenges -- peak oil, environmental degradation, climate change, and financial meltdown.

That's why the notion of social science in service of accelerating the existing system troubles me. Tim has spoken about the need to “Work on Stuff that Matters.” How might we apply social science toward "stuff that matters" instead of toward "buying more stuff that doesn't matter?"

Marc Bohlen: Finding the Intersection of Art and Technology

by James Turner | comments: 0

Artist-Engineer Marc Bohlen uses some fairly advanced technology to express his artistic visions. It's not often you find an artist with a degree from CMU in robotics, or an engineer with an Masters in Art History. Bohlen's projects explore how people and technology interact, ranging from the bickering robots Amy and Klara, to his latest project, the Glass Bottom Float. In advance of his appearance at the Emerging Technology Conference in March, Bohlen talked to us about how he approaches art, and just what art is.

James Turner: This is James Turner for O'Reily Media. I am speaking today with Marc Bohlen, who seems to collect degrees like some people collect comic books. He has a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado, a Masters in Art History from the University of Zürich, a Masters in Robotics from CMU, and a MFA, also from CMU. He's been a visiting professor in universities from Zürich to California. His work explores the boundaries between Machine Intelligence, technology, art and society. He will be speaking at O'Reily's Emerging Technology Conference in March. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

Marc Bohlen: My pleasure.

JT: So let me begin by asking: do you consider yourself an artist, an engineer, a social commentator or a melange of all of them?

MB: A melange of all of them, but I think artist-engineer is quite precise actually.

JT: What led you to that fusion of art and technology?

MB: Well, I was working in Art History, on Marcel Duchan and Joseph Beuys at the time, trying to figure out how the materials that they used in their work generated meaning. So the traditional art historian methodology just didn't work anymore. I was forced to start to look into domains of knowledge that were not part of artist textbooks or repertoire. So I wandered off into engineering, trying to solve those problems, and in the process of doing that I jumped into this field which, at the time of the late 80's and early 90's, started to formulate itself as an art technology complex, art technology endeavors, and I never looked back since then.

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Ignite Show: Jason Grigsby on Cup Noodle

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 1

Today we are launching the first episode of the Ignite Show. The Ignite Show will feature a different speaker each week. This week's speaker is Jason Grigsby doing a talk that was originally performed at Ignite Portland. Jason takes fun look at how Cup Noodle was created and how the team had to embrace constraints and new ideas to create this new food.

Ignite will be released for free weekly. It's available on YouTube (user: Ignite), on our Ignite site (file) and via iTunes (we'll be in the store shortly). It is being released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Ignite has spread to over 20 cities in the past two years. The third Ignite Boulder happened last night. The fifth Ignite Portland will happen tonight and New York's third is on Monday. We want to highlight speakers from around the world with the show. If your town or city has lots of geeks throw an Ignite to bring them together!

The format of Ignite is 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. When you are on stage giving an Ignite talk this can be quite exhilarating (sometimes terrifying). The added adrenalin really adds to the presentation and I think that will come through on the small screen.

Thanks to Ignite Organizers, sponsors and attendees from around the world for making this show possible. Thanks to Social Animal for editing the show, Bre Pettis for co-hosting the first episode (and starting Ignite with me), and Sam Valenti of Ghostly Records for letting us use Michna's Swiss Glide. Thanks to everyone at O'Reilly who has supported Ignite through the years especially Mary, Jennifer, Laura A., Laura P., Cali, Roberta, Mike, pt, Jesse, Sara, Laura B and Tim.