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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.

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.

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.

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

Here are my takeaways from New Media Atlanta:

If you were reading Twitter, you’d get a very different (and more positive) view of the conference than if you were reading BackNoise.

The last speaker

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

I’m sure having the comments be so very public made people behave a bit better as wel

e two was significant – the majority of tweets were either positive or simply restated facts from the presentations. 

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.

I was blissfully ignorant about BackNoise.

I’m truly nervous about presenting, at least to a group with laptops or smartphones in front of them

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?

The negativity on BackNoise had a very large and detrimental impact on how I viewed the event. 

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.

I don’t often bring a laptop to conferences, and now I see why.

too distracting.  It’s not just BackNoise, it’s Twitter, other social media sites (ironically), checking email, etc

anonymity tends to bring out the worst in peopl

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?

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.