Buried deep within the comment stream of Don’t Blame BackNoise was a remark by Jeff McConnell talking about the different uses of the back channel at New Media Atlanta and CapVenture. With his permission I lifted the comment as it seems worthy of discussion.
I attended the Cap Ventures showcase last night and found Backnoise to be a great tool and used well. I’m not sure why it was so much different at NMA than at Cap Ventures but it
could be any of the following:
- Extensive dialog to-date made people aware of the unofficial “rules” and bad behavior from NMA was avoided.
- Audience was “different” than NMA. CV09 was mainly investors,
early stage CEO’s, ATDC, TAG, and ATA leaders. Don’t know about NMA. - Audience was “wanting” and in some cases “willing” these presenters to succeed. They were all pitching their dream.
- The 34 presenters were limited to 3 minutes each, so even if they were not great they were over quick.
- CV09 was free and that tends to increase your tolerance for weak content if it occurs.
- There were clear leaders on BackNoise setting the tone of the conversation.
In any event, it worked well from my point of view and there is a reason. May be one (or more) of the above or one I’ve missed but the results were vastly different for some reason.
There were actually two active back channels during the CapVenture. In addition to BackNoise the good folks at EventHive set up a channel. You can currently view the archived BackNoise stream and EventHive stream.
One of the more interesting things that occurred is that I set off some intended or unintended bad behavior on the EventHive “Best Presentation” vote when I asked “can people that are not viewing the presentations vote?” EventHive requires non anonymous log in using Twitter or Facebook credentials.
What do you folks make of that?