Over the course of three years, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference has become an important part of my yearly techn-bio-rhythmic schedule. Etech is not only an event where I can recharge my technological batteries and catch whiffs of truly new and shiny geeky stuff, it also allowed for an annual meeting with a couple of my best friends, Link and Gabby.

Sadly, I couldn’t make it this year due to a conflicting engagement… which, while a positive opportunity, created a circumstance that hasn’t improved my disposition. I’m starting to skim through the etech posts aggregated on Technorati and flickr pics and look forward to the more colorful commentary (I hope there’s a planet-style aggregator out there somewhere). But it’s just not the same from the outside looking in, and I have nothing to replace being with my friends… or the ritual boxty and beer, nighttime kite flying, and the philosophical, Keith Richards fueled, conversation at the Hill Street Cafe as the sun goes down over the waves.

Rather than trying to fit this into a series of Twitters, here are a few off-the-top notes about Elluminate (and other synchronous online classroom tools) based on my experience with them.

We (at the University of Alaska) chose Elluminate as our statewide application only after a long and voluminous evaluation of what was out there and pilots and small-scale use of two major competitors (Macromedia Breeze/Adobe Connect and Horizon Live).

Our number one concern was that we wanted an application that worked well over low-bandwidth connections, including satellite latency– many of our students are in remote Alaskan locations with consumer satellite or distributed satellite connections. In this respect, although Adobe Connects asynchronous tools were attractive, and had a following, it simply could not compete. Elluminate Live is front-heavy (the initial download of the Java application the first time a user connects to a server, but only the first time) is quite large (in some areas we distribute the client on CD) but the stability and ability to deal with low-quality connections is unequalled. To my knowledge no other platform has the same kind of caching/store and forward ability that Elluminate does.

A few other features that tended to be lacking in other competitors:

• authentication through Blackboard is possible (but NOT required– perhaps 30% of our users come through Bb, 40% through another proprietary system, and 30% at large)
• structured recordings available through a single URL (from the recordings link students can browse the calendar to replay sessions), ability to handle 50+ users (obviously, classes are not typically that large… but for us, other uses of Elluminate have been key to getting reluctant users in– we’ve had working groups of 50-75 admin/staff/faculty before, and presentations and guest presentations can reach over 100)
• Presence indicators — the ability to “see” more of what is happening in the classroom. Not just emoticons and hand-raising, but the halos that show who is typing in the chat, who is loading images, etc. makes time management and understanding of the class activities *much* easier
• Granular control of tools– there are times when it is very useful to be able to control what tools are available… not just for control, but because instructors can streamline and not be distracted with tools they won’t be paying attention to
• Breakout rooms and multiple moderators– our philosophy is all about getting students to “do” and instructors to lecture less… the ability to use breakout rooms with multiple “moderators” in each room and easily move students and/or material back and forth is a key to facilitating student activities
• Half-duplex audio– although Elluminate can be set to allow up to four people to talk at once, the vast majority of our instructors prefer the single-speaker model, where one person at a time “has the floor,” and they leave it that way even now
• Instant polling tools, which make it easy to “sense” the room and be more flexible and spontaneous when teaching.

That’s some of the good stuff that separated Elluminate (at the time) from others. Some of the more touted Elluminate features for education, particularly video and the quiz tools, see almost no use at all. Part of that is philosophical– as an organization we don’t really believe that the video capability available in these applications (even with good connections) adds significantly to courses; part is operational– the quiz tool is simply clunky and it’s just easier to use other tools.

Support has generally been quite good– the biggest issues almost always involve lack of Java on student computers and/or lack of privileges to allow the Elluminate system to install it if it isn’t– but support is still needed!

And Elluminate is expensive. They do offer steep discounts (we run Elluminate on our own servers, I assume they are flexible in their hosted offerings as well), but it isn’t free. However, as much as I gravitate towards free and small tools to fill needs (the personal living network), this is an area where we really felt that paying for a commercial system provided significant advantages.

In my opinion, playing the part of Captain Obvious, it depends on an organization’s needs. Is the sync classroom service mission critical and aimed at significant adoption or is it an ancillary tool or is it just another arrow in the quiver? Will the system also be used to serve internal, admin, staff, or external presentation needs, where large populations of users need to be accommodated?

The real issue with any of these tools isn’t finding one that works, it is learning– and then teaching colleagues– how to teach in a way that takes advantage of the capabilities and doesn’t merely replicate the lecture mode in a distributed format. That’s deadly. As I always say, the only thing more deadly than the PowerPoint drone and lecture model is that same model through a mediating tool like Elluminate…

The slides from Quinn Norton’s Etech presentation on “Body Hacking” are now available. This was a fascinating talk. I love the Make motto of “if you can’t open it you don’t own it”– what could be closer to us as individuals than ownership of our own bodies? At the same time, the general hacker ethic of bending the world to our will and needs emphasizes both our place in the “external” world and our ability to shape world and body both.

Video of an apparently similar talk from 23C3 is also available…

I’d be remiss to not point out one of the eternal phrases to come out of this years Etech conference: “Rub the Felt.”

View the video, but be forewarned– it does involve Beck, Yahoo hack day, and puppets in compromising positions…

A lot of things were improved at Etech this year… particularly the logistics. The rooms were properly sized for sessions and much more accessible (no more gigantic geek gridlock between activities), the wireless was pretty much rock-solid, and there was adequate power available. But there is a lot of room for improvement.

As far as facilities go, an immediate and useful improvement would be to have spaces set aside with power and long tables for people to just gather and mingle. Almost everyone will agree that the best part of these conferences are the people you meet, and that often stems from backchannel, twitter, and other online interactions– providing space(s) to facilitate those meetings would be great.

More importantly, the presentations could be handled a lot better. I understand why a conference like this can’t go un-conference… I think that format is best for smaller, more intimate gatherings. But given that the presentation format remains the same (a long bit of presentation only then some Q&A), why not require that all the presenters make the presentation part of their sessions available a few weeks ahead of time online? Then the sessions themselves could be much more interactive– more like BOF discussions than presentations. I don’t need to fly thousands of miles to watch a narrated slideshow… give me that information in advance, then let’s get down to the business of talking about the ideas and material. That’s where the good stuff is. It’s very rare to want the Q&A part to end– it’s always too short, while the presentation section can seem endless. This would have the welcome side effect of ensuring that the promise of “I’ll make my slides available soon” comes to fruition.

This would also allow more time for those sessions where the presentation value is heightened either through the experience (watching the mathemagician live is a must) or through interactive presentation content (debates, panel discussions, group activities, etc).

Selection of speakers is also something that needs to be reconsidered. Putting together a conference of this size is difficult, and kudos to Rael and others for all the work they out into making sure Etech is a good experience. But there is just something wrong when the topic of the conference evolves– or even changes radically– and the speaker list remains 75% (maybe more) the same. It would be like holding a conference on networking and then one on gaming and having the same list of speakers.

A lot of innovation happens on the edge, and the edge is hard to reach, but that should be where Etech organizers really extend their search. The whole concept of focusing on “emerging” technology is problematic because there isn’t necessarily a gigantic amount of obvious, discontinuous, innovation happening every 12 calendar months. So in addition to reaching to the edge, don’t be afraid to follow up on past topics more closely. This doesn’t mean the same people, but the ideas. Last year, with the topic of “The Attention Economy” the way was paved to follow up with more cognitive and neural science, for instance, but instead we got abstractions about those fields from people who are not necessarily specialists. It’s the cyclical nature of emergence that people create something new and then what they have created is picked up by others, not just themselves.

On a very personal level, the representation of the educational technology sector was at an all time high and I think it might be time to recognize that the education area is an ever more important domain for technological happenings, particularly given the growth of participatory culture and youth-dominated social networks.

I always get a lot out of Etech, so these are not really complaints. But as technology evolves, so should the conference itself!

Amy Jo Kim of ShuffleBrain provided a lot of good information. Unfortunately, her voice is one of those that almost immediately makes me want to go to sleep.

The most interesting thing in this session was a framework for applying various game mechanics (each of which she explained) to one’s own application, including: collecting, points, feedback, exchanges, customization, leader boards, content-sharing, accessible tech, and syndication.

Most of the participants formed into small groups to work through an application exercise using the framework and– surprise– there was an education group (in fact, I’ve met three higher ed folks here, which is two more than ever before) which was fun to watch, particularly when one of the people repeated a bunch of things I had talked to her about at lunch about presence, avatars, and community building. Clearly the education cabal is on the same page… and this should be useful at CDE.

The slides, which will hopefully be made available online, illustrated all of the mechanical concepts with existing applications. I’ll link to them if I can.

I’ll probably say more about this when I get a copy of the slides Scott (Berkun, author of The Art of Project Management and the upcoming The Myths of Innovation used, but the emphasis of this session was on being an innovator and integrating the art and creativity of innovation with the real world demands for schedules, milestones, and fiscal responsibility. So, my scattered notes of things that I found particularly interesting:
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The first day of Etech is tutorial day. My first session was supposed to be Kathy Sierra on “Creating Addictive User Experiences.” As you probably know (since the blog world is going crazy about it), Kathy had to cancel her session and her keynote because she has been receiving anonymous threats of death and sexual violence as well as some truly horrid attacks from a few other well known bloggers. There are plenty of entries out there, so I won’t get too far into it except to add my voice in support of Kathy and to counsel some caution before seeking excommunication of some of the bloggers who are tangentially involved, including one who has clearly and directly apologized for his role in facilitating the attacks by known entities.

Watching the responses reminds me a bit of the old Julian Dibbell article “Rape in Cyberspace” about the effects of sexual violence in a MOO community. These threats are much more “real” in some visceral way, but what makes me think of that article is wondering if the blog community will actually take some kind of generalized collective action against the bloggers involved. The death threats are criminal and rightly being dealt with by the police. But the other hateful words and images appear to be attributable to specific people– will they be “punished” by the A-Listers? Will they be delinked and stripped of their Google juice? Can the A-List echo chamber actually perform a punitive action?

I hope Kathy returns to blogging– if she doesn’t, she “lets them win” to some degree. It’s a sad irony that some of those involved are also loud complainers about the lack of female representation at tech conferences. Not much is uglier than people jealously savaging one of their own. Equally sad are those who wish to minimize the very real effects of violent sexual threats and imagery. How can those people look themselves in the mirror– or sit in front of their keyboards– if they really believe words to be that weightless and images that meaningless?

I’ve really enjoyed etech the past two years, but each year should see improvements based on the last. Here is the first of my thoughts on this. Note that Indentity Woman has been musing on this topic as well… I would invite others to do the same and start tagging them etech07. May as well start now.

One of the problems with Etech is that at the same time that the content is about innovation in technology and– essentially– communication, the format of the conference sessions themselves are incredibly traditional. The rare speaker that deviates from dispensing the traditional Death by Powerpoint cocktail most likely does the same with Yet Another Lessig-style Powerpoint (which I hereby label the YALP).

There is an active backchannel via IRC, but little is done with it. This year they don’t even have the single aggregating screen with IRC-bot they had last year, much less anything more innovative. It’s all about Sage on the Stage with their trusty projector sidekick. Granted, this style is efficient and will likely be the base for conferences (particularly as they get this large) for a long time to come… but doesn’t everyone recognize that while it’s a good format for hearing, it’s not so great for learning, understanding, or interacting?

As one back-channel wag put it, this isn’t a conference about everything emerging– after all, they don’t want emerging food or hotel beds (though we do have emerging inflatable chairs in the main foyer). Fair enough– but I maintain that with so much of the talk here being about technology enabling community and attention streams and filtering that perhaps the conference itself could become a crucible for creating a real etech community that pays attention to… well… attention. Which is one of the things the backchannel is about.

I’m not claiming to have complete answers, but why not try to put some of the ideas to work? It’s like getting together on audioconference to talk about how empowering and enabling web communities are. If you have to, you can, but here we don’t have too. So…

What about a filtered, live, parallel back-channel feed using the collective community smarts everyone is talking about? And this is a serious geek brain trust.

Since O’Reilly is OK with whoring out speaking spots (not to put too fine a point on it– I do love O’Reilly and etech, but that kind of thing really bugs me), how about turning a few hours over to lightning sessions with a gong-show style audience-voting mechanism? In fact, this would be preferred for most vendor presentations if I had my way. And, clearly, anyone who was paid for (or rewarded with) a speaking spot should be clearly identified in the program just as vendors and services already are.

Or, be less overt. How about some lamps or orbs which change color and/or intensity according to the back-channel assessment? A simple IRC bot that read the ++/– lingo could do this.

How about some different session formats: use a group collaboration tool like GroupSystems for a session, have a panel conversation Q&A, break an audience into groups with topics and discuss. It doesn’t have to be (and really couldn’t and shouldn’t be) a complete unconference, but some variety would be great, particularly of the kind that gets the important conversations started.

The traditional academic style poster sessions could actually be put to good use– solicit poster sessions and a space for them where an individual or group can put their hobby-horse on display and invite group conversation… kind of a mini Birds of a Feather bazaar.

And why, in this day and age, are tutorials limited to the same-time, same-place with no prep? Tutorials are money-makers and presenters work to deadline (don’t I know it!) but imagine how useful and interesting the tutorials would be if the presenter could know in advance that he can expect a certain level of familiarity on the part of the participants? As a constant trainer, I could only dream of having that leg-up when I am preparing to work with a group!

[ruminate etech etech06 etech07]

The more I think about the issue of ownership of community data– particularly when the community essentially is the data– the more convinced I am that we need to take a closer look at the inherent assumptions (and contradictions) of current online community models.

Ning, being the kind of next generation of remixing app that it is, really brings this issue to the fore. To the point that I am uncomfortable recommending its use for any serious endeavor despite being impressed with what it would allow people to do.

If the people and the data are the community, then it doesn’t make sense to me that the owner of a site gains de-facto ownership of the data when it is submitted. It doesn’t make sense because it is a traditional way of viewing ownership and it doesn’t need to be that way. Ning, for example, already stores the data in a central data store. An individual application is just one way of arranging and viewing that data, upon which multiple applications by different people can come to rely. Those are all good things.

If an application– a data structure– disappears, which is something I think should be allowed to happen, there’s no reason the data has to. Just create a community called “archive” or something and associate the data with that. It seems easy enough from a technical standpoint. If a community is active enough for the sudden data loss to matter, then I’d have guidelines that strongly recommend methods for transferring application ownership. But if the owner is resistant, my data shouldn’t be lost, particularly in downstream applications. That’s old, one-way web thinking.

Applications like this need to be viewed as containers and structures for data– sophisticated and feature-added structures– but just containers nonetheless. I’m the one who should make any decisions about retracting my own data if it’s otherwise deemed suitable for a group of sites. Having feeds for backup isn’t enough– it makes me responsible for repopulating in all those other applications, not to mention how it would damage the date-based entries and sequencing.

[ruminate etech etech06 community property ning]