The first speaker was quite good, but he kept referring to the “backnoise.” I didn’t know what this meant, but a quick check of Twitter and Facebook led me to the BackNoise website. From what I can determine, BackNoise is the equivalent of passing notes or whispering in the back of the classroom, except anyone who wants to participate or listen in can do so. Someone had set up a conversation area on BackNoise for New Media Atlanta, and people in the audience were typing in comments during the day that others could read in real time.
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AirSet - cloud computers for groups - 2 views
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I used AirSet cloud computing in the past with the staffs of Schools #65 and #95. The primary reason was to create a shared calendar. It worked really well in both locations mostly because they were only asked to use the calendar feature. More advance/adventurous users took advantage of the other apps including text messaging, file storage and sharing, committee to do lists, and iCal integration. It has changed quite a bit since then.
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Unexpected Learnings: BackNoise Can Be Toxic | New Media Atlanta - 0 views
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One thing I learned yesterday was how the existence of BackNoise can change the direction of an event in real time. This sounds like a good thing, and it partly is.
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after lunch, the lights in the auditorium were low and several people posted on BackNoise that they were falling asleep, so the organizers turned the lights back up. When a panel discussion and the keynote speaker got good reviews, they let those sessions run long (which meant the last session of the day didn’t happen, which would have upset me if I were that presenter, but it appears the audience got what they wanted). And there were enough gripes about the “no beverages in the room” policy that the organizers had a shipment of bottled water brought in and added a break in the afternoon. All good stuff!
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Unfortunately, BackNoise, the backchannel service being used, allowed anonymous posts. In this case anonimity allowed the participants to take cheap shots at the presenters.
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Getting feedback from the participants allowed the organizers to "cater" to the needs or interests of the participants. For example, improving the lighting, or being more flexible with restrictions, no beverages in the conference room.
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Real-time gathering or dissemination of information can be good feedback for the presenters/organizers.
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A majority of the comments were just plain mean in an irrelevant way – not constructive criticism, but rude, boorish, even vicious remarks. A few people commented about this rudeness on BackNoise and were immediately scolded with responses like “If you don’t want to read snarkiness, you don’t have to stay on this site!” They were right. I became more and more dismayed as I stayed on the site, and I kept telling myself I should leave (and maybe actually pay attention to the presentations – what a concept!). But it was like catching the first few minutes of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” or trying to eat just one Frito…you know it’s going to be a junky trainwreck but you just can’t help yourself and you can’t stop.
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The one and only person to post their handle was shouted down by the "crowd think". See Philip Zombardo on TED.com on the effect of power on one's actions. http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html
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The remarks became more critical, each one seemingly worse than the previous remark.
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That’s the silver lining in what became, for me at least, a big, ugly, gray cloud of negativity. As the second speaker started, people on BackNoise started bashing his PowerPoint slide design, and then his content. His content was pretty basic – I wasn’t learning anything new – so I distracted myself by continuing to watch the conversation on BackNoise. It degenerated from bad to worse. As the day went on, there were some posts of substance, such as people saying that they wanted more “how to” information than they were getting.
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Only one person put his real name up, and pretty soon the masses bored of picking on the speakers and turned on him for awhile. He was able to defend himself in a snarky (and presumably respected-by-this-crowd) way, so that mood passed. But you could see the “crowdthink” forming right before your eyes – if one or two people designated a presenter “good” or “bad” early on, the vast majority of other posts would follow along in that vein. And they’d almost try to one-up each other with the meanest and wittiest observations they could think of.
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At one point, I had Twitter open on one browser (using the designated #nmatl hashtag) and BackNoise open on another browser. The difference between th
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The last speaker got wise and projected the live BackNoise feed for all to see. The perception of no longer being anonymous appeared to change the tone of the conversation.
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Following another source (Twitter) the feedback was much more positive or just about fact finding.
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...the "crowd" had been very critical of a speaker who had the misfortune of seeing the comments as well.
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Here are my takeaways from New Media Atlanta:
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Questions to consider after this experience: Do you put a no laptop/mobile device policy in place? Should you continue to read the backchannel feedback, looking for ways to improve your presentations and better meet the needs of your audience? What positive/negative affect might that feedback have on you as a presenter? Are you sure the conference is a fit for you? What new information might you take away from it? Do you know your audience?
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If you were reading Twitter, you’d get a very different (and more positive) view of the conference than if you were reading BackNoise.
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instead of using a PowerPoint presentation, he put the live BackNoise conversation feed up on the screen behind him as he spoke. The tone improved, partly because Chris was really good
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e two was significant – the majority of tweets were either positive or simply restated facts from the presentations.
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I cringed for one of the previous speakers when two separate people posted how much her presentation had sucked, and this was right up on the screen for the entire audience (including her) to see.
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I’m truly nervous about presenting, at least to a group with laptops or smartphones in front of them
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should I read the BackNoise chatter about my presentation afterwards or not? If people have constructive criticisms that can help me improve my talk and give the audience more of what they want next time, that’s great! But I don’t think I could handle people joking about or making fun of the way I look, the way I pronounce words, or other personal details that are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. That kind of feedback would probably make me a worse speaker – more tentative, less sure of myself, and less likely to want to present at all. Come to think of it, could BackNoise have a dampening effect on professionals being willing to share their knowledge in general?
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The negativity on BackNoise had a very large and detrimental impact on how I viewed the event.
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the conference and the speakers were not bad at all – in fact, they were quite good. The problem was that there were too many advanced people in the audience, like me, whose expectations didn’t match what was being presented.
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too distracting. It’s not just BackNoise, it’s Twitter, other social media sites (ironically), checking email, etc
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How can you justify paying good money to attend an event and then not only fail to pay attention to the content, but instead spend the day trying to entertain people you don’t even know at others’ expense?
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I have the naïve optimism to ask anyone and everyone who’s attending a conference or event to do two things: If you use BackNoise or similar sites, keep your comments constructive and focus on the venue or content rather than making personal attacks or jokes about fellow human beings. Have the guts to use your name when you have suggestions as to how things can be improved rather than remaining anonymous. That would be the mature, professional thing to do.
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shared by Ken Fuller on 13 Oct 09
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Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata - 0 views
www.adammathes.com/...folksonomies.html
tags CollaborativeTagging SocialClassification SocialIndexing SocialTagging SemanticWeb TagClouds Web2.0 clouds User-createdMetadata metadata
![](/images/link.gif)
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Any idea what "folksonomy" is? Where did the term come from? Why would it be important to this group?
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Ah! You've been doing your homework young Jedi! Do we want to apply "some structure" for example ELA8_xxx; use the more popular tags that are recommended when creating a post, or do we let it all evolve?
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I tend to use the tags that are provided when I tag in Diigo. Is there something I am missing by not evolving our own tags?
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"I tend to use the tags that are provided when I tag in Diigo. Is there something I am missing by not evolving our own tags?" Oh, no not at all. I was thinking down the road when we get teachers hooked on Diigo. Let's say Teacher A wanted to search through his schools' group for ELA content. If the group added ELA_ or Gr8_ as a prefix that might simplify his search. So, in this scenario the provided tags would serve as a base and the prefixes would allow for faster more refined or focused searches.
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