Real life has a habit of intruding so no posts for a while. Apart from welcome distractions like preparing to get married (something that tests your project management skills in a good way) Ihave been busy with day job stuff like last week’s first Digital Inclusion conference (see www.dc10plus.net) and preparing for the forthcoming e-Voice conference (see www.evoice-eu.org).
The difference between a real life meeting and online stuff is interesting (at least to me). Perhaps because I’m not as used to cyberspace as others the joy for me of a real life conference is not the presentations but the chats in between – especially the unexpected ones. A polite conversation as you wander round the exhibition area searching for good giveaways can suddenly blossom into an opportunity to develop a new project or enhance an existing one.
You can get some of this online (and following the next generation of links from friends and colleagues social networking sites is quite useful) but that tends to be to make contact with people you are already interested in rather than people you had no idea you wanted to speak to.
Peter Dawe of Pipex once said to me the success of the Cambridge Phenomenon was not the conferences but the coffee breaks. Perhaps we should try and emulate coffee breaks online?
Watching the rough cut of the Civic Surf video suggests that blogging may be a half way house. You are then putting yourself open to people coming back and contacting you because of their interest in an issue. Our councillor bloggers have certainly found the level of feedback good and unanticipated and made useful contacts on issues they feel strongly about.
Tags: cambridge, conferences
May 6, 2008 at 3:53 pm |
I agree with you about the coffee breaks at conferences. Far too often on the platform people are repeating what you can read elsewhere if you wanted. So much so that in one recent conference I went to the presenter spent over half the time playing a film and presentation already available online.
Blogs can be part of the halfway house and without a blog I think it is difficult to take part in the online coffee break. Twitter is another mixing opportunity, as is Facebook. You see people you know and are interested in link to others you don’t know. You follow the new folk and they are sometimes of interest and sometimes not. You can drop them as easily as you pick them up (which isn’t always so easy at conferences
).
Thanks for the comment on the film. I’m looking forward to showing in Norwich later in the month.
May 30, 2008 at 3:17 am |
Rootlike says : I absolutely agree with this !