Monday, November 07, 2005
In the Lecture Hall, a Geek Chorus
July 24, 2003
By LISA GUERNSEY
nytimes.com
AT the University of Maryland, it started as an innocent
question posed in an e-mail message to those attending
WebShop, a three-week lecture series about the Internet.
"Does anyone else think it would be a good idea if we all
had IM available to us during these lectures?" asked Sinan
Aral, a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Sloan School of Management, referring to
instant messaging. "Several times after questions, I wanted
to 'whisper' to someone across the room or send a relevant
link."
Mr. Aral discovered that he was not alone. The next day in
the auditorium, which was outfitted with a wireless link to
the Internet, a group of people booted up their laptops,
opened their IM programs and spent the next three hours
happily exchanging notes during the presentations.
The "IM circle," as it became known at the June lecture
series, soon attracted more than a dozen people at a time.
As the speakers ran through their PowerPoint presentations,
the room hummed with the tip-tap of IM chatter.
"Is this really an economic issue?" wrote one audience
member in response to a presenter's remark. "Experiments
like this are too structured," wrote another. "Did he
really just say that?" asked one. "Wow! He did," someone
responded.
Over the past year, as wireless networks have been
introduced in hotels, university auditoriums and conference
halls, people with laptops have realized that they do not
have to sit idly during the presentations. Some people, of
course, ignore speakers entirely by surfing the Web or
checking their e-mail - a practice that has led some
lecturers to plead for connectionless auditoriums or bans
on laptop use.
But others are genuinely interested in a lecturer's topic
and want to talk concurrently about what is being said.
They may also like to pass around links to Web sites that
relate to, and may refute, a speaker's point. For them,
wireless technology allows a back channel of communication,
a second track that reveals their thoughts and feedback and
records it all for future reference.
Cory Doctorow, a science fiction writer and blogger who has
experienced this back-channeling at several international
technology meetings, likens the chatter to what happens in
the corridor just after people leave a conference session.
"We're just moving the corridor into the room and
time-shifting it by 30 minutes," said Mr. Doctorow, who
takes notes and posts them to his Weblog, or blog, during
conferences, enabling people to follow the speaker and Mr.
Doctorow's take on the speaker at the same time.
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University's
interactive telecommunications program, has run experiments
using messaging software to supplement face-to-face
meetings of 30 people. Many participants find the
experience highly stimulating, he said, explaining, "The
intellectual quality of a two-track meeting is
extraordinarily high, if it is run right and you have smart
people involved."
But many speakers at the front of room are less enamored of
the practice.
"To me, it's a little irritating, frankly," said Stewart
Butterfield, chief executive of Ludicorp, a company that is
developing Neverending, a multiplayer online game. In
April, Mr. Butterfield addressed a conference on emerging
technologies as listeners experimented with messaging
software, including a program called Confab offered by his
own company. The next week, when he spoke at a conference
without any Internet access, "people were a lot more
attentive," he said. (He added, however, that many of them
kept opening their laptops during the speeches in the vain
hope that somehow the Internet might have magically become
available.)
Indira Guzman, a doctoral student and adjunct professor at
Syracuse University who was at the WebShop lecture series,
said she had become aware of the back-channeling while
teaching her classes. "You realize that something is going
wrong," Ms. Guzman said. "You think, 'Uh-oh, maybe they are
talking about me.' "
Some people who have experienced the phenomenon cite a
speech given last year at a computer industry conference by
Joe Nacchio, former chief executive of the
telecommunications company Qwest. As he gave his
presentation, two bloggers - Dan Gillmor, a columnist for
The San Jose Mercury News, and Doc Searls, senior editor
for The Linux Journal - were posting notes about him to
their Weblogs, which were simultaneously being read by many
people in the audience.
Both included a link forwarded by a reader in Florida to a
stock filing report indicating that Mr. Nacchio had
recently made millions of dollars from selling his
company's stock, although he complained in his speech about
the tough economy. "No sympathy here," Mr. Gillmor wrote.
"When Dan blogged that, the tenor of the room changed," Mr.
Doctorow said. Mr. Nacchio, he said, "stopped getting
softball questions and he started getting hardball
questions."
Some people are hoping that conferences will evolve to
allow the undercurrent of conversation to be projected on a
big screen in the front of the room. They say that such
public disclosure will enable speakers and unconnected
audience members to feel less isolated.
Mr. Shirky, the adjunct N.Y.U. professor, considers
openness to be critical to productive discussions and
conducts his messaging-software experiments so that all
speakers can see what is being posted. At the University of
Maryland, where the use of IM became a matter of a heated
debate, several students said they were perturbed by the
back channeling not because it seemed rude (although some
argued that point, too), but because they felt left out.
The split focus of two-track meetings and back-channeled
conversations have other drawbacks, not the least of which
is that they can be utterly distracting. "There were times
when I'd follow a thread and come back to the lecture and
feel a little disoriented," Mr. Aral acknowledged.
Joichi Ito, a venture capitalist and former chief executive
for the Japanese branch of the Internet service provider
PSINet, opened a chat room for back-channeling during
Supernova, a communications conference held this month in
Crystal City, Va., just outside Washington. But Mr. Ito
readily acknowledges the downside. "There is definitely a
lot less focus in the room," he said, "but I think we were
already starting to suffer from that."
At high-tech conferences where everyone is already wired to
the gills with BlackBerry pagers and cellphones and can
cope easily with constant connectedness and streaming
information, the concept of multitrack communication
channels almost seems matter-of-course. "This is not
something that is going to go away," Mr. Ito said. As many
technology experts point out, if laptops were banned,
people would use cellphones. If wireless Internet access
were not officially available, networking gurus would find
a way to create ad hoc connections.
Some observers say that the multitrack channels will simply
be considered a given by a young generation that has honed
multitasking to a fine art and grew up on VH1's "pop-up"
videos, in which commentary about the artists pops up on
the screen during the song.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ito is already creating a new riff on the
concept. He said he was working with a group on designing a
"hecklebot," a light-emitting diode screen that displays
heckling messages that are typed during online chats at
conferences. "I want to make something that I can put in a
suitcase and take to conferences," he said. He describes it
as a subversive device that will get people thinking about
the significance of the back channel. From the chat room,
he said, "you could send something like, 'Stop
pontificating.' "
If the speakers were logged on, they could play the game,
too. Maybe some would type, "Pay attention."
July 24, 2003
By LISA GUERNSEY
nytimes.com
AT the University of Maryland, it started as an innocent
question posed in an e-mail message to those attending
WebShop, a three-week lecture series about the Internet.
"Does anyone else think it would be a good idea if we all
had IM available to us during these lectures?" asked Sinan
Aral, a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Sloan School of Management, referring to
instant messaging. "Several times after questions, I wanted
to 'whisper' to someone across the room or send a relevant
link."
Mr. Aral discovered that he was not alone. The next day in
the auditorium, which was outfitted with a wireless link to
the Internet, a group of people booted up their laptops,
opened their IM programs and spent the next three hours
happily exchanging notes during the presentations.
The "IM circle," as it became known at the June lecture
series, soon attracted more than a dozen people at a time.
As the speakers ran through their PowerPoint presentations,
the room hummed with the tip-tap of IM chatter.
"Is this really an economic issue?" wrote one audience
member in response to a presenter's remark. "Experiments
like this are too structured," wrote another. "Did he
really just say that?" asked one. "Wow! He did," someone
responded.
Over the past year, as wireless networks have been
introduced in hotels, university auditoriums and conference
halls, people with laptops have realized that they do not
have to sit idly during the presentations. Some people, of
course, ignore speakers entirely by surfing the Web or
checking their e-mail - a practice that has led some
lecturers to plead for connectionless auditoriums or bans
on laptop use.
But others are genuinely interested in a lecturer's topic
and want to talk concurrently about what is being said.
They may also like to pass around links to Web sites that
relate to, and may refute, a speaker's point. For them,
wireless technology allows a back channel of communication,
a second track that reveals their thoughts and feedback and
records it all for future reference.
Cory Doctorow, a science fiction writer and blogger who has
experienced this back-channeling at several international
technology meetings, likens the chatter to what happens in
the corridor just after people leave a conference session.
"We're just moving the corridor into the room and
time-shifting it by 30 minutes," said Mr. Doctorow, who
takes notes and posts them to his Weblog, or blog, during
conferences, enabling people to follow the speaker and Mr.
Doctorow's take on the speaker at the same time.
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University's
interactive telecommunications program, has run experiments
using messaging software to supplement face-to-face
meetings of 30 people. Many participants find the
experience highly stimulating, he said, explaining, "The
intellectual quality of a two-track meeting is
extraordinarily high, if it is run right and you have smart
people involved."
But many speakers at the front of room are less enamored of
the practice.
"To me, it's a little irritating, frankly," said Stewart
Butterfield, chief executive of Ludicorp, a company that is
developing Neverending, a multiplayer online game. In
April, Mr. Butterfield addressed a conference on emerging
technologies as listeners experimented with messaging
software, including a program called Confab offered by his
own company. The next week, when he spoke at a conference
without any Internet access, "people were a lot more
attentive," he said. (He added, however, that many of them
kept opening their laptops during the speeches in the vain
hope that somehow the Internet might have magically become
available.)
Indira Guzman, a doctoral student and adjunct professor at
Syracuse University who was at the WebShop lecture series,
said she had become aware of the back-channeling while
teaching her classes. "You realize that something is going
wrong," Ms. Guzman said. "You think, 'Uh-oh, maybe they are
talking about me.' "
Some people who have experienced the phenomenon cite a
speech given last year at a computer industry conference by
Joe Nacchio, former chief executive of the
telecommunications company Qwest. As he gave his
presentation, two bloggers - Dan Gillmor, a columnist for
The San Jose Mercury News, and Doc Searls, senior editor
for The Linux Journal - were posting notes about him to
their Weblogs, which were simultaneously being read by many
people in the audience.
Both included a link forwarded by a reader in Florida to a
stock filing report indicating that Mr. Nacchio had
recently made millions of dollars from selling his
company's stock, although he complained in his speech about
the tough economy. "No sympathy here," Mr. Gillmor wrote.
"When Dan blogged that, the tenor of the room changed," Mr.
Doctorow said. Mr. Nacchio, he said, "stopped getting
softball questions and he started getting hardball
questions."
Some people are hoping that conferences will evolve to
allow the undercurrent of conversation to be projected on a
big screen in the front of the room. They say that such
public disclosure will enable speakers and unconnected
audience members to feel less isolated.
Mr. Shirky, the adjunct N.Y.U. professor, considers
openness to be critical to productive discussions and
conducts his messaging-software experiments so that all
speakers can see what is being posted. At the University of
Maryland, where the use of IM became a matter of a heated
debate, several students said they were perturbed by the
back channeling not because it seemed rude (although some
argued that point, too), but because they felt left out.
The split focus of two-track meetings and back-channeled
conversations have other drawbacks, not the least of which
is that they can be utterly distracting. "There were times
when I'd follow a thread and come back to the lecture and
feel a little disoriented," Mr. Aral acknowledged.
Joichi Ito, a venture capitalist and former chief executive
for the Japanese branch of the Internet service provider
PSINet, opened a chat room for back-channeling during
Supernova, a communications conference held this month in
Crystal City, Va., just outside Washington. But Mr. Ito
readily acknowledges the downside. "There is definitely a
lot less focus in the room," he said, "but I think we were
already starting to suffer from that."
At high-tech conferences where everyone is already wired to
the gills with BlackBerry pagers and cellphones and can
cope easily with constant connectedness and streaming
information, the concept of multitrack communication
channels almost seems matter-of-course. "This is not
something that is going to go away," Mr. Ito said. As many
technology experts point out, if laptops were banned,
people would use cellphones. If wireless Internet access
were not officially available, networking gurus would find
a way to create ad hoc connections.
Some observers say that the multitrack channels will simply
be considered a given by a young generation that has honed
multitasking to a fine art and grew up on VH1's "pop-up"
videos, in which commentary about the artists pops up on
the screen during the song.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ito is already creating a new riff on the
concept. He said he was working with a group on designing a
"hecklebot," a light-emitting diode screen that displays
heckling messages that are typed during online chats at
conferences. "I want to make something that I can put in a
suitcase and take to conferences," he said. He describes it
as a subversive device that will get people thinking about
the significance of the back channel. From the chat room,
he said, "you could send something like, 'Stop
pontificating.' "
If the speakers were logged on, they could play the game,
too. Maybe some would type, "Pay attention."
# posted by Cate @ 7:24 PM 
