Attempting to “walk the talk” of conference communication
Experimentation with back-channel communications and media delivery in a conference setting using Apple iPod touch devices as the primary device.

Ian Quartermaine

Full Article – PDF

Preface

Circumstances and a desire to break new ground in conference communications lead to some interesting experimentation at the “Education Revolution in Action” conference held at John Paul College in June 2009. The event, sponsored by ISQ & QSITE (amongst others) is in its second year.

Background

Many conference goers have noticed a tendency in the last couple of years for delegates to use a range of communication tools to actively communicate with others during talks and presentations. Depending on the devices owned by individuals and the wireless coverage supplied at a conference venue, delegates would use email or some other messaging service to communicate online their rapture or pain at what was being presented.  With the proliferation of smart phones, net-books, ubiquitous wireless at venues and services like Twitter, the practice has increased and the term “Back-channel” has come into common use.  Wikipedia describes back-channeling in relation to public speaking as “the practice of electronically passing notes among some or all of the audience/students during the lecture. When sanctioned, this practice is particularly useful for speakers who are attempting to dynamically modify their presentations based on immediate feedback from the audience. When unsanctioned, this practice is often very distracting for the presenter. Meebo and Twitter are common back channeling devices, although any chat room style device works well”.  (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2009)
Twitter is now in the main stream and in case you’ve missed it, is “a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.”(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2009)

As indicated, this practice is not everyone’s “cup of tea”. Opinions range from those who think it is inconsiderate, rude behavior; to those who might cynically claim the back-channel is often more edifying than what is happening at the lectern. Whatever your opinion, I think the “horse has bolted” and the next generation of presenters should look to actively engage and include the back-channel in their planning. This is exactly what we attempted at our conference this year.

In the months preceding the conference we had also been trialling a server solution from Apple called “Podcast Producer”. The solution allowed the web based submission of various media (audio & video) and then instigated work flows that encoded, watermarked and addressed the media on a Wiki interface on the server. From here an RSS subscription URL could be generated and anyone with a copy of iTunes could subscribe and download the media. IPhone and iPod touch users on campus could then “sync” the media to their devices and take it with them. Prior to the conference I had only really used the installation for “cultural” video like sport and special events at the college. The conference provided an opportunity to use the server to deliver content to delegates and I will outline what we attempted shortly.

Circumstance was kind and a month before the conference Apple offered the loan of 250-300 iPod touch devices for delegates to use during the conference. What we attempted would have been possible without this, but the scale of exposure to the technology would not have been.

I had been experimenting with a web service called CoverItLive (CiL). I’d used it with staff and students for live feedback and was impressed firstly at its functionality, and secondly by its price; free! The service describes itself as a live blog.  Basically it allows you set up live chat sessions with embed script generated at the time of creation of each blog. A webpage with the embedded script is then accessed by any number of users with each getting a unique instance of the chat (blog) window. Each window shows the aggregate of all contributors. I tested pages in a Safari browser on an iPhone and found the developers had optimised the code for these devices. This is obviously the service I selected to use at the conference and more of its functionality will outlined shortly.

The Process

It requires a fairly advanced infrastructure and level of service to attempt what we did. Campus-wide wireless access meant that no matter what room delegates were in they could participate with their device of choice. An open guest Wi-Fi channel was provided to delegates during the conference. I had some brilliant support from our library staff members who, the day before the conference, took all the iPods, “barcode stickered” them and fed them into a database. They then packaged the devices with the conference sample bag. Previous to this, I had used a team of students to charge the devices, link them to iTunes and sync some pre-prepared videos to the devices. These included a presentation from a teacher who couldn’t be at the conference and a helper video I created for first time iPod users. We retained the services (and paid) three students to assist with video media during the conference. Acer sponsorship provided a lab of Net books and these were set up by our Techsphere staff with a pre-configured copy of iTunes already subscribed to the Podcast Producer server.

Just prior to the conference we set up a designated area of a publicly accessible web server for the session scripts. I created a simple sequence of pages, generated CoverItLive (CiL) session scripts for roughly three quarters of the planned conference presentations and embedded them in the pages. The service also provided Twitter integration based on “#” tags so we generated a unique table of hash tags for conference sessions and published these to delegates. A setting in CiL tells the script to search the twitter streams constantly for its relevant tag and pulls the “tweets” into the dialogue window alongside the CiL dialogue coming from the pages (E.g. Send a tweet with the tag “#edrevkey1” in the body of the text and it would appear in the relevant chat window for that session). Delegates had the choice of using the web pages or their normal twitter client. One annoying but understandable overhead was the requirement for each session to have a moderator. As a user accessed their chat window our moderators would approve their first comment and then set “Always Approve” to allow all future comments. CiL is used for large scale public events and this feature is a necessity to control any badly behaved participants (“trolls”). With a single administration account I designated certain staff members to be moderators (”Producers”) and elected a small group of “Panelists” for automatic unmediated access. This group obviously included our speakers in each of their respective sessions. Media and polling objects can also be added to the streams and each session had a quick evaluation/feedback poll for the presenter.

During the conference my team of student cameramen and staff took high definition video of roughly half of the sessions.  When not filming, students were back in the lab editing the AVCHD footage using Pinnacle Studio and outputting the video as high quality iPod mp4 footage. Once completed the videos were then uploaded to Podcast Producer server.  As mentioned earlier this could then be accessed by anyone with copy of iTunes and the subscription URL. Delegates were encouraged to find ten minutes on Day Two to go to the Acer lab and grab a sample of presentations they may missed on the previous day. It was more a matter of demonstrating the process rather than a serious attempt to deliver all media to all delegates. There was simply not enough time in two days for all the editing and data transfer required. We are finalising the content presently and the external subscription URL will be sent to all delegates for their access.

Reflection

The degree of back-channel chat on the various sessions varied considerably, ranging from “none at all” to considerable. Keynotes generated more discussion than break-out sessions where the intimacy of the smaller venues seemed to discourage some users. The quality of chat ranged from insightful and extremely useful down to whimsy and pure fun; all valid in my opinion as a way to enhance the conference experience. Some delegates did not participate finding the novelty of using the iPod touch enough to occupy idle moments. Some simply felt uncomfortable with this new and exposed way of communicating. There is no doubt that the “Twitterati” amongst the presenters and delegates carried many of conversations, accustomed as they are to this sort of communication. We also had people external to the conference watching the streams and contributing in some cases. One presenter to my knowledge actively engaged the stream asking another delegate to interrupt him with any worthwhile questions. While this was rough and unstructured, I couldn’t help thinking that collaborating with the audience in this fashion has great value. No doubt it requires considerable confidence on behalf of the presenter.

Feel free to access the site to see some of conversations and get a feel for what went on. The site is still open at http://jpcconference09.jpc.qld.edu.au/backchannel.html . A great feature with CiL is the replay mode. Once a live session has been closed, the script and data remain in place for viewing.  Refer to Figure 1 for parts of the chat transcript of Keynote 3; an engaging paper on Nanotechnologies presented by Dr Kristin Alford.

Some connection problems and iPod issues were reported but generally the CiL service and the devices worked extremely well. Most problems were more to do with user’s unfamiliarity with the devices.

As to the video media; production issues aside, it is hard to argue with the value added for delegates of presentation video supplied after and during the conference. To be able to refer back for details in presentations and indeed see talks that were missed is invaluable. I don’t believe there is a more efficient workflow (i.e. file> podcast server >iTunes >iPod) on offer for media delivery at the moment and the device is a pleasure to use. Whether the dominant platform in the future will be iPod/iPhone or some other remains to be seen, but the value is obvious. We are evaluating how this type of delivery model can be used in the classroom for instructional and course related media as well as the “cultural” content already discussed. Refer to Figure 2 for a sample of the conference video titles currently available in the “Podcasters” channel in iTunes. Unfortunately access to this feed is only available to conference delegates at this time.

Bibliography

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2009, July). Article -Back-channel (In Public Speaking). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-channel

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2009, July). Article -Twitter. Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

My current take on the potential of what I’ll call Apple’s pod products in an educational setting.
Drag the embedded diagram below or see full view at the following link

While solving issues relating to iGoogle’s bookmark gadgets I now more fully leverage my Delicous account and my delicious tags. Please load the following PDF

Look at strategies to record, and post conference presentations as streamed embedded video or audio. Probably the most celebrated use of this mechanism are TED talks. Screen recordings plus narrations could be employed or whole presentations videoed. Finding a storage repository for the content needs careful consideration. We could always hide the content on the society web site or Ning but I can ‘t help thinking we should use the cloud. A society YouTube channel could be used for smaller offerings and services like Viddler or like for larger . We can then take our embed script from these sites and present them in the formal society sites. This has the advantages of the reducing required infrastructure for the society and also progressing the association on the web because outsiders can find the content and the society name. Other synergies are possible as well.

Have a series of “Show & Tell” screen sharing/VOIP sessions using a product like GoToMeeting. The nominated member shares their screen online with invited others and gives a tour of their environments, CMSs, LMSs or other exposition. A screen recorder like  Camtasia is used to record each session and then this is posted as video in Flash, wmv or Quicktime and embedded in a suitable site.  See video hosting discussion in the Strategy 4. Once again a suitable booking mechanism would be required.

Create a society podcast that records member discussions on selected topics – Encourage all members to obtain Skype addresses. Arrange a series of topics on particular dates. Using skype conference calls, members discuss an issue . Using a Skype add-on like Pamela the whole conference is recorded and exported as mp3. This is posted as a podcast on the society’s web site, RSS XML created and ultimately addition to iTunes. Most of the main stream podcasts use a mechanism not dissimilar to this. The technology here is not hard…it’s the quality of the conversations that make this work or not.

Need a suitable booking system to go with this for posting and acceptance of sessions. A cloud service like Google calendar for example if the society web site doesn’t offer a calendar or like booking tool. Interested members would add their skype addresses. A society “Skype Out” account could be added to the mix so landlines and mobiles could be included in a conference.

Encourage all members to setup professional blogs using a well known and established blog platform (like edublogs, wordpress etc). When they have a professional contribution to make, they post to their blog and then post the link to the society mail list, twitter or other social tool etc. The society’s website can then aggregate member blog addresses into a central list. It is advantageous for the individuals and ultimately the society itself to have the blog posts exposed externally to the organisation.

Selection of a HD camera that uses solid state or SD card memory is attractive as the price is reasonable ($1000 -1200 range) and it gives a lot of flexibility with students utilising a minimal number of cameras. A used card is extracted and camera passed on to next student and card readers take care of the upload. The disadvantage is that the compression required means that the captured video will be in AVCHD format. There is definitely a disadvantage for high end video work with this format.

“The main issue with editing AVCHD footage is that it is long-GOP (group of pictures), an inter-frame compression version of MPEG-4 that compacts data for multiple frames together. This makes it difficult to view or edit individual frames because some of the data in “frame #3″ may be in “frame #2,” expanding the compression over several frames, making editing more difficult, with longer render times. Processor speeds are an important piece of the puzzle, with resources being used up for decoding, editing, and output with effects in real time, slowing down overall system performance.” ( http://www.internetvideomag.com)

Many editing suites have not fully come to terms with AVCHD yet and specifically our original choice of Sony Vegas as primary editing suite will also be a problem with this sort of camera, unless we use a SONY camera.

“Sony Vegas Studio 8 Platinum supports HD video, including HDV capture and editing ($119). It also supports AVCHD import and edit, but only from Sony camcorders.”( http://www.reelseo.com/ )

The same web article goes on to say that for overall performance and abilities with a variety of formats that Pinnacle Studio is a great option and handles AVCHD fully. We can currently get a 10 user licence plus goodies for less than the Sony Vegas quote.

“Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate version provides an end-to-end HD video editing workflow, including native HDV and AVCHD editing ($99). It did the best job of working with AVCHD videos on my system — opening, playing, editing, and exporting with good response. Studio could browse quickly though the AVCHD folder structure, view thumbnails of the clip files, and then click to preview the clips. The interface was very responsive, dragging the slider to scan though the clip, playing fast forward and reverse modes at 2, 4, and 10X speeds, and even resizing the application window while playing video. It also has a handy full-screen playback mode.”

Our other option is to avoid the AVCHD format and get a mini DV tape camera that does pure HDV format. Almost all editing suites will handle this format adequately. Unfortunately, a quick scan of Digital Camera Warehouse’s offerings reveals that these are expensive with a couple starting at around $1700 and quickly jumping up to higher end ($5000) cameras. Probably need to search a little more here. Even if a cheaper model exists however, we have no real options available for USB tape reader type devices (like SD/media card readers); they don’t seem to exist! This means we have the situation were the cameras are out of use while upload for editing takes place.

My current option is to go for the organisational advantages of SD/Media card camera and select Pinnacle Studio Plus 12 to handle the AVCHD editing.

This pedagogy has been around in various forms for many years. Using MS Photostory 3 (free download) students can combine a recorded narration with a series of images, music and effects. The software is simple and intuitive and the synergy of narration and imagery seems to stimulate student’s creativity. The final output chosen is usually a WMV video (see example below). Best results are obtained with an USB headset/microphone but cheaper microphones will do the job. There can be various planning stages but a storyboard chart is recommended as a minimum. For each image this includes a thumbnail image, narration text, transition, effects and music. The following digital story about Digital Story Telling captures the features and uses.

 

I’m conducting a trial of Yammer for my organisation. It is a free sign-up and the privacy policy is acceptable. See the following two email  invitations: One to management and one to teaching staff. For an idea of what Yammer is and the different approach I took; please read on…

To management team and technicians: Primary focus - Team work and increased empathy
Committee & Techspere members,
A testimonial :
Jason Calacanis, Mahalo CEO -  “Any company which isn’t running Yammer right now is missing out on the best communication and productivity tool available in the market today. It’s a massive game changer. We got everyone [at Mahalo] to agree to do 1-3 updates a day and it’s taking the level of communication to a new height that we didn’t think was possible. It’s opt-in time sheets without the guilt/pain, not for big brother reasons, but for true sharing and understanding between team members. “

Have a try …….  Just sign up with your JPC email address at https://www.yammer.com . It is restricted to our domain. I’m sure some of you will simply not “get it” for awhile but I’ll be patient, and it would certainly help if you have used Twitter.

 

The best way to describe Yammer would be that it is a micro-blog (like Twitter) but private and for the enterprise. The whole premise of twitter is, “ what are you doing” and you get 140 characters to describe this. No salutations are required and you only follow those people you think have something of interest to you. Yammer  on the other hand asks, “what are you working on” and is a  totally private for your organisation. I’m excited to see if a tool like this could open up some communication pathways not seen between staff before.

A tool like this would never be proposed as a replacement for e-mail but it would be an avenue for quick comments, insights and day-to-day happenings that could educate us all.

 

Some of the possible advantages might be:-

·         a better understanding of what other people do during the day with the synergies that this might create

·         knowing where people are

·         medium for teamwork discussion

 

E-mail would always remain the primary conduit for important business communications.

 

I have is signed up the JPC domain name for a trial. It is free. See the links below for some re-assurance :

 

http://testimonials.yammer.com/

 

https://www.yammer.com/company/privacy

To teachers: Primary focus - Additional but informal conduit for PD & Enjoyment

Hi Everyone,

 

One disadvantage of email is that everyone gets the message whether they want it or not.

I am playing around with a service that mimics the very popular “Twitter” application on the web. This one however, is private to people with a jpc.qld.edu.au domain email address.

The service works on an “opt in” basis and you only follow those members who have something you might want to hear. It is generally a much quicker and informal way of communicating as opposed to email. Email however, will always remain the formal communication channel.

 

My yammer will offer quick & informal tech tips, interesting web2 developments and occasional humour. To follow me or anyone else who joins the system go to

https://www.yammer.com/home

and enter your school email address to join or “Trash this mail with a vengence”