Creating a buzz
If you look at online conferences, and the blogs etc associated with physical conferences, you might come to the conclusion that the virtual community is really active. That's true to an extent, although in terms of percentages I think the proportion of active people is actually quite low. However, even if that perception is accurate, the effect is still one of a "great buzz" purely because of the numbers involved.
However, on this side of the pond, ie in the UK, the educational community is very much smaller, and so the relative low level of online participation shows up much more. This became apparent to me recently. A conference I attended was accompanied by an extensive provision of blogging facilities: a dedicated blog, blogging by phone, email and text messaging, as well as photo and video blogging. The conference centre enjoyed wireless internet access throughout, and an internet cafe, whilst members of the audience could engage with the speaker via questions sent to a website through SMS, concurrently with the session. Finally, videos were made of some of the sessions, and podcasts will be made available. Yet despite all this, the number of posts about the conference, at least on the conference blog itself, is embarrassingly low.
Why?
I'd like to explore some possibilities, and welcome your views.
The newness of Web 2.0
I think we have a somewhat biased view of the extent to which blogging etc is embedded in everyday life. As far as I know, despite all the statistics telling us that a new blog is created every nanosecond, we are still in the minority. So, in a conference attended by around 700 people, it may well be that only half of the delegates blog at all, and perhaps only half of them blog on a regular basis, and perhaps only half again blog every day. If my assumptions and my math are correct, that makes a total blog-ready population of around 90 people, ie people who are likely to write a blog about what they've seen and heard. And I think that is likely to be an overestimate.
If I am correct, one sensible way to increase the (active) participation rate vis-a-vis conferences would be to increase the participation rate per se. So, maintaining a regular blog, and constantly referring people to it, may be a viable option. But not just a blog. Other forms of participation are important too. A weekly podcast, perhaps? A frequently updated social bookmark site?
The 1% rule
I've observed that, as a general rule, only about 1% of any population is active, by and large. The interesting thing is that I sometimes read articles or see presentations where people come up with formulae to show that when a certain number of members is achieved a tipping point is reached, with the result that the volume of participation expands exponentially. That may or may not be true, but in real life I have noticed that the number of participants does not expand in the same manner. If these observations are accurate, they would suggest that the more people attend a conference, or feel some sort of commitment to it and/or the organisation running it, the greater the amount of active virtual participants there is likely to be.
Opportunities are not enough
Given the extent to which blogging and so on was made possible in the conference, you will no doubt be as surprised as I was to hear that someone in the audience bemoaned the fact that there wasn't enough evidence of the technology we're talking about, and that the conference should be much more "immersive". On the other hand, one of the very first SMS messages sent to a speaker was "Why should I use this when I already have my voice?".
It would be interesting to lock those two in a room together and see what they come up with for next year's conference! But on a more serious note, we seem to have issues of a lack of communication (did the first person really not know that all the virtual facilities existed, despite the number of times, in various places, it was mentioned?); a lack of vision, or at a lack of a perceived need.
So, it is clear that providing such opportunities is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a vibrant online conversation to take place.
A matter of personality?
Could it be that in the UK we are hampered by the paucity of larger than life people at conferences? At the conference I referred to here, we did have a number of big names -- but they are all quietly spoken and, well, typically English. For example, whereas an American will voice approval of something by exclaiming "Woo hoo!" or "Wow, this is so cool", her English counterpart will state "That looks quite good." Does our apparent lack of excitedness make a difference? I don't know.
Contentious issues
It's no doubt obvious, but a good way of getting a buzz going is to make an outrageous statement or present some contentious views.
Anything else?