If there is something unique to say about the first Kolabora Live! online event, is that it was absolutely unlike any other Internet event I have been before.
Set to break many of the conventions and formalities typical of online Web conferences and presentations, the Kolabora Live! premiere showcased six live presenters in the glory of full and audio and video and seven simultaneous a/v feeds. For the over one hundred registered participants who attended live, the format of the event itself became the most interesting thing outside of the actual issues being reviewed in it.
The innovative technological setup I had prepared for Kolabora Live! was not at all part of the Communicast standard offering, and I must thank Communicast for bearing with my requests and ambitious explorations into unchartered grounds. As Communicast is a company wishing to portray and deliver high reliability and ease of use for its system, I must thank them officially for having allowed the integration of a cutting-edge multiparty videoconferencing room.
So, on one hand the event was not the typical, everything-happens-as-expected type of thing. Surprises, bumps and issues came up throughout the event.
Here the highlights who may provide some good learning lessons for everyone:
At the very beginning we had a few problems getting all of the presenters ready in a back room not accessible by the audience. Jay Cross finished setting itself up only 3 or 4 minutes into the hour. Obviously it was not his fault, but rather the getting familiar with logins and setups which did not prove to be 100% foolproof at the moment of need. Fifteen more minutes of setup time and not being the ones to be the first ones at trying something out would have guaranteed full success.
Then, in a room rich of over 115 people (230 registered), we gradually popped-up within the six videoconferencing windows I had setup in our presentation space. Six plus one video windows for a total of seven (!) simultaneous audio/video streams going to our audience. Here we had a few more problems as Jay and Wes took a few seconds to pop-up properly in their seats. During this phase we also lost a number of attendees who could not manage all of the bandwidth (about 250 Kbps) we were actually using.
Though we also lost Stephanie Downs, our official moderator, due to other technical issues and to some participants trying to get in to her seat (!), we continued straight into the event while increasingly engaging the panelists in showcasing the options and opportunities that such an innovative rich delivery approach could offer.
Presenters in fact introduced each other in a rather pleasing and poetic effort of portraying their mate in a most spontaneous and personalized way. Jay Cross was as good as he can be in introducing Wes unique profile and character, and Nancy White read a short haiku she wrote to portray Heike Philp. Heike herself recited a wonderful poem written by her and singing the glory and skills of Nancy. Well, quite a departure from the buttoned-up profile identikits we normally see during online Web events.
As the event moved into its central part we started to actively exchange and discuss some of the issues at heart to each one us. The views and contributions from the panelists were rich and varied, offering many interesting points of view that could be seriously leveraged for planning and designing live events designed around people and not around technology. Jay himself was quick to point the beauty and value of the spontaneity and genuine exchange that was happening, versus the arid, cold, too formal output of the 98% percent of Web seminars and presentations out there.
The Cluetrain Manifesto spirit and attitude was fully reflected in the Kolabora Live! event highlighting the importance of rich interaction, simple to use technology and informal openness in carrying out serious business online.
I did not hide the problems we were having, not tried to cover them up by selling fake and prepackaged candy sentences. I did not put electrical fences around the podium and the entrance to the event. Anyone could get in, and anyone, as we later showed, could even come up to the podium and make herself seen and heard!
And while yes, we had a few people crying for not being able to access or hear properly our exchange, we had over 75 people glued to this event for over an hour.
As we later lost also Jay, due to technical issues (not related with the Communicast platform), we gradually engaged increasingly the audience by taking up some of the text questions or comments they were sending in, as well as by letting a few participants come actually on stage to join our conversation.
Dave Williams from Toronto, Dorothy Krause in the US and Brad joined the panelists and posed some very interesting questions to us. The exchange became indeed very pleasing and valuable in this very last part, which extended our official one hour running time by over 35 minutes.
After 1:40 minutes of session we still had over 45 people logged in and listening participating to the event.
My personal conclusions:
The beauty of the event was in its format, providing seven rich audio and video channels for six live people interacting together.
As one of the participants cleverly noted this made the event apparently much like television, where a show or interaction is happening "out there" and we attendees watch with interest the story unfolding out there.
Unlike traditional web seminars there was no long, formal and monotonous presentations with PowerPoint slides.
Technology was stretched to make a point. Those who are communication and learning experts saw the point and understood the worth of the meta-statement being made by the nature of this event.
Some of the traditional users, web conferencing industry people and others saw only unreliable technology, excessive informality, shallow exchange and nothing to go home and study with. I do understand and respect these people, and I know I did not offer to them what they probably have been long used to see and expect in these type of events.
An important advancement was made and that the eyes of a few, were indeed forever opened to realize the importance of what was being done yesterday.
This was a breakthrough event for technology. Though I or Communicast do not have the exclusive on this, this was the very first online event with more than 100 people that utilized seven simultaneous audio video feeds throughout the event.
This was a breakthrough event for online communicators, presenters and trainers. It showed how important, essential and valuable is spontaneity and true live interaction. There is no amount of know-how and beautiful slides that can replace that.
This event also showed that there should be no "experts" or "presenters" but rather more facilitator and guests, and that the knowledge is the one that emerges from the exchange and challenges coming from the participants and not from the imposed download of notions through long PowerPoint-enabled individual presentations.
Yesterday the longest time intervention was 2' and 15" by Wes Kussmaul, distinctively the longest speaking panelist.
This is not to say that traditional, buttoned-up, top down, formal e-meetings and presentations like most of the ones being run online these days are just useless crap. But it is just to point at the pivotal difference that exists between online communications that reflect the past industry character of mass consumerism and TV-approach to the ones that open up to the Cluetrain Manifesto spirit and understand that genuine exchange, openness to change, honesty and informality are the super traits of the companies and businesses that will drive today and tomorrow markets.
If you want to better understand the differences and contrasting poles between traditional buttoned-up Web conferencing and the some of what we have seen at the opposite end yesterday at Kolabora Live!, give a look to this great set of design panels, showcasing the evolution or revolution occurring in communications and read the valuable article about socio-technical shifts occurring to content and user-experience that comes with them at:
http://exonous.typepad.com/nkda/2004/02/more_sociotechn.html.
More Socio-technical shifts...
[via Jay Cross - Seb's Open Research]
And what is your take on all this?
