I’ve finally got round to reading Click, Bill Tancer’s brilliant expose of our secret lives as revealed through our online searches. I was interested in Bill’s observation about modern conference events:
“With the pervasiveness of wireless hot spots and laptops that have built-in wireless capability, conference audiences have turned keynotes into multitasking events, half-listening to presentations while simultaneously answering email and browsing the web.”
What struck me is how the gap is narrowing between face-to-face and online events. You could usually rely on a fully attentive audience face-to-face while bemoaning the ease with which multitasking occurs online. The reality is that the same phenomenon is now occuring in each setting. This is not to suggest that multitasking (or rapid switching between tasks, which is really what is happening) is an evil that is spreading and needs to be stamped out. Multitasking – assuming that the audience is not blogging or tweeting about the presentation, which is a positive sign of even more focused attention – is an exertion of people power. I’ll do what I want when I want. If you can grab my attention and hold it then good for you. If not, then there’s plenty more I can be doing with my time.
Is there a limit? To my mind yes. I cannot tolerate laptops and phones in use during workshops and other highly participative learning events – it’s an insult to all concerned, and if you as facilitator don’t deal with it, other members of the group surely will.
Tags: multitasking, webinars
Well, the way that I see it there two really simple solutions to this – 1: tell folks to turn their phones off and close their laptops. They’re supposed to be there to listen, right? 2: work with it. Set-up a specific hash-tag for the talk (which you present on screen at the start) and encourage folks to post links via tweets etc., as they take part in the session. I suspect the latter would be more popular but could be chaotic – perhaps you could ask delegates to only do so during group activity sessions.
Truth be told, the reason I go online whilst at conferences is because the speaker is boring me to death.
On my bookshelf is a copy of a slim book published in 1920 and entitled “Good Manners for Boys”. It covers such niceties as not using your handkerchief at the table, how to address your sister and your mother, when to hold open a door and stand back for others to go first, which knife and fork to use for your fruit course and so on. It might not be such a bad idea if the modern child and Generation Y-should-I had received similar guidance. Yes, you have the power to vote with your feet if the presenter is boring you, but then why not just heckle or throw rotten fruit if you disagree with something or it fails to capture your interest?
I was at a seminar about Internet marketing recently and the presence of laptops and notebooks in the various sessions was common and expected. Frankly, given the topic and the audience it would have been unusual not to see a plethora of electronic devices. However, I’m sure that there are other scenarios in which this would obviously be an invitation to “leave the room” even if the attendees remain physically present.
I have been at many corporate conferences where attendance and participation were weak, to say the least. These were conferences developed by management for the benefit of employees. I have felt that there was a distinct lack of behavioral standards set forth by management in many cases. Attendees would come and go as they pleased and lack of attention and participation was a non-issue.
On the other hand, if a seminar or conference is a pay-per-admission event, it is the obligation of the organizers to offer compelling presentations. As long as attendees are not being disruptive, no problem.