Jennifer Jones blogged about her experience with backchannels during conferences and meetings. Her observation was that if you’re not familiar with backchannel, the practice of participants communicating in the background of your presentation, your first exposure to it can be confusing, irritating, or distracting. But it can also be revelatory and enlightening. Comments on Jennifer’s blog pointed to advantages and disadvantages of the backchannel (instant formative feedback, parallel learning, impact on working memory, multitasking, perceived rudeness, a backdoor, etc). Chris Lott took up his own analysis of the backchannel, concluding that backchannels provide an opportunity for leadership to emerge, information to be shared and cross-referenced, and greater ideas to develop.
Since there will be chat technology on each presentation page at this year’s TTIX conference that will facilitate a backchannel in each and every session, I thought it would be interesting to get the opinions of TTIX participants and presenters, both before, during, and after the conference. What has your experience with backchannels been?
4 Responses to “TTIX and the Backchannel”
[...] blog posts reflecting on and analyzing the phenomenon of the backchannel prompted me to write a consideration and proposal on the TTIX 2008 blog. My post there summarizes the question of backchanneling, and encourages conference participants [...]
As a presenter the backchannel gives me value feedback about how I am doing. It lets me know when I am losing people and how I might improve. It lets me know how I am doing with engaging the audience. At worst it will help me improve.
As an audience member it lets me interact my thoughts in a public forum and get valuable feedback from others. It lets me chance my thought processes down with the aid of others who are observing the same presentation but may have different points of view.
For me the backcahnnel is one of the most valuable tools I use at conferences and in meetings it is like taking notes on steroids. I am not limited to my own thoughts but the ideas and prognostications of others.
Topical article on prohibiting backchanneling:
http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=1329
Backchannels… well, it’s a great place to make fun of the presentation when it stinks. As a presenter, I think the goal is to try to come out as close to unscathed as possible. I’m impressed when anyone can actually track the backchannel while presenting, and even more impressed when they actually respond to it.
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