3Dcamp is an unconference, should we have a live backchannel?

After attending the Social Networking panel at University of Limerick last Friday Grabriela Avram gave me a tour of the venue for the upcoming 3Dcamp. I was very impressed with the facilities at the Engineering Research Building and think it will make a great location.



Below is a photo of the main lecture room which, as you can see, sports two large projection screens and a whiteboard.



An important point to remember about Barcamps is that they follow the unconference format where the content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants (generally day-by-day during the course of the event) rather than by one or more organizers in advance of the event. Dave Winer is generally credited with coining the term and he notes -

"The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage. [So] first, you take the people who used to be the audience and give them a promotion. They’re now participants. Their job is to participate, not just to listen and at the end to ask questions. Then you ask everyone who was on stage to take a seat in what used to be the audience."

We think this is very sage advice and intend to follow it at 3Dcamp. But we'd like to hear what you think? So please take to time to vote here and/or comment below.

Comments

[elly parker]

IMHO, yes a Jaiku backchannel should take pride of place on the day. That way all info can be pushed into one "thread" and monitored from one location (URL).

If the speakers are made aware in advance then they will expect it, and make even make use of the comments to add to their talks.

[James Corbett]

Agreed Elly, I think it will fit into the Barcamp ethos very well :)

[mikepk]

Grazr streams are a pretty good way to get a merged feed of multiple possible back-channel communication methods (Twitter+Jaiku+etc...). Don't know if you're already thinking along thoses lines or not. :)

[James Corbett]

Well you know me Mike, of course I was thinking along these lines! :) But seeing as I'm an organizer and keeping Barcamp's non-pitching ethos in mind I don't want to push it on anyone. But if others want it...