The ‘tremors’ of conference amplification
Since the JISC Comms teams launched Crowdvine as the social networking site for the JISC Conference 2008 last Friday, interest amongst delegates has been slowing picking up and now beginning to gather pace. People are joining up, having a look around, putting up their blog and twitter feeds and making the odd comment or two. So it seems to be working..!
Discussions have been flying around our office about how effective Crowdvine will be, what delegates will use it for, how it will be used etc… There are various camps of opinions on this one, but on the whole everyone agrees that it is definitely adding to the buzz around the conference and it certainly helps us lot in JISC towers tap into what delegates are discussing in the run up to the JISC Conference, what they are planning and who they are interested in hooking up with. It can all surely be a good thing?
I recently read on Lorcan Dempsey’s (OCLC) blog about the ‘tremors’ that conference amplification causes and how having something like Crowdvine for a conference allows you to keep track of what is going on if you are not there, without going to a huge amount of effort….”it happened in the background. it was like weather”. this I think hits the spot with what Crowdvine is for, and what we hope to achieve with this first step into ‘conference amplification’ for the JISC Conference. It provides background online noise for the physical conference.
Now I am fully aware of the varying opinions on Facebook but we figured that we might as well create a Facebook event for the conference anyway but not really to make too much of it, but at least it was there. No-one was really invited, just a couple of JISC Comms people that I was friends with. People slowly came out of the woodwork though and signed up to the Facebook group (those tremors again). A commenter on Lorcan’s post about ‘tremors’ questioned the effectiveness of having so many different channels (Facebook, Crowdvine) and suggested it ‘dilutes the buzz or creates virtual cliques’. Probably true I guess, but I have noticed that since we launched Crowdvine last week, the Facebook event group has slightly increased in numbers after having stayed at a certain number for a while….so those tremors must still be doing their thing…?! I actually think that perhaps it enhances the buzz..as the more channels there are, the more people know about what is going on, even if they are not going..? Perhaps I am completely wrong, but it just struck me as quite funny that the Facebook event group has increased in numbers since the Crowdvine network was launched and there is a definite link. I think if anything it has helped enhance the buzz around the conference, rather than dilute it. but I am probably wrong about this…and I’m not sure what I think about the ‘virtual cliques’ issue yet either…surely being online it’s impossible to create a ‘virtual clique’ as a physical clique is something that is difficult to penetrate and become part of? but being virtual or online - surely anyone can access,view, read, comment if they want to or go to the effort of looking for it…? again I am probably wrong about this too!
interesting things to ponder though…! maybe next year we should have a debate session in the programme about this kind of stuff!!
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