By Julian Dierkes

In April, I participated in Global Affairs Canada’s #Diplometrics conference asking how the activities that fall under Digital Diplomacy might best be measured.

In addition to fascinating content and lots of learning, I enjoyed looks around the room to see what innovations there are in how we run conferences about things digital, presumably with some difference to “more traditional” events.

Since this conference followed on a conference the week before in an entirely different area (geographically and substantively) where there was no online discussion, no hashtag, and I couldn’t find the other speakers online (!), I was happy to see that the #Diplometrics event involved colleagues who are active online.

Parallel Discussions

I’ve experimented with some tools for hosting discussions at academic events that would allow the audiences to digest and comment on presentations online as a complement to Q&A sessions at the end. So far, these attempts have been mixed, I would say. The #Diplometrics event at least overcame the challenge of other events where there isn’t a critical mass of people engaging online so that twitterwall stall, for example, as too few people are contributing.

The #Diplometrics twitterwall was active enough that new tweets would appear with regularity and that there was a fair number of comments on presentations that went beyond agreement and applause. Those comments in general seem to come in two forms: 1. Actual comments on the substance of presentations, and 2. Links and pointers to other projects, tools and resources. I think both are very useful to include.

I felt significantly less self-conscious staring at my device for a good portion of the time as others did as well, though there was also a number of people (including myself) taking notes with pen-and-paper while using one of multiple devices. Mixed methods! The electronic tool of choice seems to be the keyboard-connected tablet.

.@jdierkes Here you go: Professional digital natives & tools that they are using at #Diplometrics : A pen and paper! pic.twitter.com/7A90BoRjtu

— Philip Mai (@PhMai) April 20, 2016

I am increasingly less concerned about the frequently expressed worry that parallel discussions divide attention. While it does require some concentration and effort to stay focused on a presentation while also commenting on it, in the end, I see this as somewhat akin to (my kids’) bi/trilingual education. Yes, maybe their written expression will not be as perfect as a unilingual student, let’s say 90%, but if they add even only 50% percent fluency in one or more languages that’s still a lot more than 100%. And as a presenters, I am always happy to think that some of the people starting and tapping at devices are engaging more intensely with what I am presenting than someone who is listening passively but with full attention.

Twitterwall and Audiences of Hashtag Users

One challenge I see is between live-tweeting for remote audiences and the parallel in-room discussions I mentioned above.

Looking at my tweets appear on the Twitterwall made me a bit self-conscious that most of what I was tweeting was intelligible only to people in the room and relatively meaningless to others following on-line. This is a general challenge in 140-character-messages, I find, i.e. not to give in too much to the temptation to turn abbreviations and references into a code that becomes unintelligible to the vast majority of accidental or casual listeners.

One solution could be to have two different hashstags for these different purposes, i.e. one that is used, perhaps by a designated team, to live-tweet to remote audiences, and another hashtag that would be used primarily for the in-room discussion. That adds another layer of complexity, however, that we may not be quite ready for (yet).

Other Tools

Video is entering conference activities that I’m involved in. Examples for #Diplometrics were my preview discussion with Mark McLaughlin and Jay Wang on blab, but also the streaming and side-interviews that the #Diplometrics organizers conducted, mostly using Facebook Live. In my mind, such streaming and brief reflective interviews offer terrific opportunities for (at least passive) remote participation in a conference, a single session, or even just one presentation. Nice amplification!

Several presenters relied on prezi rather than PPT, something that I don’t see much at other conferences. I still haven’t seen anyone present directly from a mobile device using the prezi app.

One participant had a gorilla stand for his mobile which looked like it was a good alternative to the keyboard-connected tablet, though not easy to type on.

Of course, some tools one could see at the conference were also decidedly old school-cool:

Tools of digital diplomats… @mjmclean‘s power source appears to be a diesel generator.#Diplometrics pic.twitter.com/sfWuOWV6jJ

— Julian Dierkes (@jdierkes) April 21, 2016