<![CDATA[More about the LesBlogs conference
http://lesblogs.typepad.com

There has been a story going around bloghosphere since the conference ended. See here:
http://samkoma.net/videoblog/?p=10

During the conference an Irc channel which was called the backchannel was open and lots of the time content from that streem was projected on the two big screens behind the panelists. I did not participate in the Irc channel but according to some participants this was adding value to the conference. I liked the projection of the backchannel, on many occations participants added information such as weblinks for what the panelists discussed - and also some real-time critique of what the panelists said. In some cases the panelists and keynote speakers regarded this as rude behaviour such as a participiant saying that statement from a presenter was "bullshit" and that being projected in big letters on a screen behind the presenter.

I have been to many on-line conferences where slides and presenter voice is projected and the main medium of communications from the audience is some kind of IRC channel. On-line conferencing system such as Breeze,Horizon Wimba and Illuminate all make use of irc but now you can also have voice and video of participants. But for some the irc is the only two way communication tool that works, there seem to be lots of people who have somehow not set there environment up right to project sound - almost all can receive sound though.

This kind of IRC is valuable, it also creates community feeling among the participants and on the on-line conferences I have been to there has only been posted very relevant information. Somehow the norm seems to be different on the LesBlogs conference. Individual bloggers can of course post whatever they like but I think it was not fair to the presenters that sometimes a very disruptive information - and information that undermined what they said - was projected on big schreens. It is also interesting that nobody seems to mind that a picture of a sleeping man ( one of the keynote speakers) was projected on the screens and posted on flickr with scrambled logos - as a joke. Well jokes are important and you can make fun of your friends - but I wonder if there was such community feeling in this gathering of European bloggers.

Here is an interesting post about backchannel backchat:
http://fordlog.com/?p=19]]>