IWMW blogs

Live Video Stream at IWMW 2010

In order to maximise impact of the event and enhance discussion and debate of ideas we will be amplifying the plenary talks through use of a  live video stream.  This service is being provided by the University of Sheffield. Access to the live video stream will available via the University of Sheffield Web site.

We would like to encourage Web teams who cannot attend this year’s event to watch the talks together and participate in the Twitter discussions.

Full information on the streaming service is available on the Video Streaming page on the IWMW 2010 site.

Treating the Remote Audience as First-Class Citizens

As has been the case in previous years (have a look at these blog post to get a feel for what happened last year) we aim to treat the remote audience as ‘first-class citizens’ at the event. We will therefore:

• Promote the address for the live video stream.
• Promote the event hashtag (#iwmw10) to encourage  discussions on the Twitter channel.
• Ensure the sound levels will enable the remote audience to hear the plenary speakers .
• Ensure the questions from the local audience are asked using a microphone.
• Encourage  questions from remote audience.

Is there anything else we need to be doing? Please do let us know.

Evaluating the Remote Audience’s Experiences

As described previously this year we will also be supporting the JISC Greening Events project which has an interest in ways on which remote participation in events can support an organisation’s greening agenda. We hope that those who are participating remotely will be willing to share their experiences with ourselves and the JISC Greening Events project.

The JISC-funded Greening Events project will be conducting an exploratory investigation on ways of minimising the sustainability impacts of academic events (such as conferences and seminars, training, administrative and project related events) while gaining the maximum benefit from them. In addition to  interviewing a number of the remote attendees the project team also intend to analyse the  Web log data in order to monitor the locations of the remote audiences and the time spent viewing the video stream.

If you want to find out more about the project please contact Paul Shabajee.

The JISC Greening Events  Project

Greening Events is a small exploratory project funded under the JISC Greening ICT programme . It is investigating how to minimise the negative sustainability impacts of academically related events (such as conferences and seminars, training, administrative and project meetings, etc.) whilst gaining the maximum benefit from them. The two main objectives of the project are:

1. To develop a prototype ‘systemic’ impact analysis methodology. By systemic we mean not only the direct impacts of an event but the knock on and incidental impacts (both positive and negative). Factors would include more concrete impacts such as energy, carbon, water and waste footprints and finances but also and the less tangible but no less important social, personal and organisational costs and benefits of people attending the events, thus enabling a more rounded exploration of the balance between costs and benefits.
2. To explore the use of a variety of technologies to help minimise the sustainability impact of events. To do this the project builds on two earlier JISC-funded software development projects and will lead to prototype software that will allow the event organisers to effectively plan their events and attendees to get connected and/or get information (including via mobile devices) towards “greener events”. Damien Steer, who is speaking at the event, will include a reference to how we are using Mobile Campus Assistant in the Greening Events project in his presentation.

The project is using real academic events as case studies and will be interviewing three virtual delegates from this year’s IWMW event as well as, if access if possible, study the Web logs of the video and Twitter feeds to see how virtual delegates are making use of these tools.

Finding Out More

If you would like more information about the project or would like to get involved in one of the interviews please contact the project analyst Paul Shabajee (paul.shabajee@bristol.ac.uk) or the project manager Debra Hiom (d.hiom@bristol.ac.uk).