Several Tech Blogs Worth Exploring. Oh Yeah, All by Women at JavaWorld is a good source of information for those looking for female tech bloggers, female conference speakers, and inspiration.
Web Teacher has posted about using the backchannel in the past. An event at HighEdWeb in Milwaukee earlier this month resulted in a backchannel revolt that made news in educational circles and serves as a morality tale for speakers and educators in the future. A few reports about the incident:
- Twitter-heckled Key Note Speaker – Know your Audience!
- The Great Keynote Meltdown of 2009
- Speakers: learn from Twitter hecklers
- My Reflections on HighEdWeb
In my mind, no one should get in front of an audience these days without someone at their side monitoring the backchannel. If you start to bomb, you need to know it immediately and take steps to salvage the situation. If this presenter had realized what was going on, he could have turned off the projector and engaged the audience in a dialog about the topic. Or something. Anything. But instead, he’s now notorious for being a plodding dinosaur in a fast-paced world.