Where we went most wrong (IMHO… Im still listening to what people are saying on the mailing lists and on other blogs) was not giving people space for discussion – but there were many presenters there that I really enjoyed and learned from. Presentations that I probably wouldn’t have bothered to watch if I’d at home because they weren’t clearly *my* field, or my area.

And as Jeremy notes, without a fairly traditional academic program at the core a lot of academics will have problems getting funding to allow them to come along. It’d be a shame to have convention packed full of great discussion if we knew there were people who were cut out of the discussion precisely because of that.

Perhaps an answer next year will be two have a lighter workshop program, accompanied by an un-workshop program…

But its great to have this discussion just now, because its important that next year’s event learns from and improves upon this years.

Anyone can throw down a couple thousand bucks. The convention topped $150,000. NMC certain contributed a small fraction of that.

Try spending hundreds (thousands) of hours and plan your own convention. NMC can’t even seem to keep its own sims from being completely empty. I doubt they could keep a room filled with 900 people in person.

But I want to reframe your argument a little.

SLCCEdu07 was not a workshop on new media, like blogging, podcasting, etc. but rather a snapshot of an entirely new field. If we were covering some aspect of a YouTube, then in-depth sessions with hands-on covering 90 minutes for one speaker would make sense.

By offering a grab-bag assortment of MANY speakers, we went broad rather than deep. This seems appropriate for an extremely early overview of the discipline. We could, for instance, fill two days on “serious games” using various MMO platforms. We could likewise cover faculty development, identity and culture, tools and procedures in longer periods.

This was a snapshot and not a seminar. Next year there should be multi-tracks and a training lead-in day.

FYI: A pre-conference survey found that 50% of attendees had spoken about SL at an official event and 1/4 had published on the topic.

Oh excuse me, Mr/Ms Anon, I had money in my mouth. I took your advice but it did not really do much . Can I have a third cliche, please?

So I assume your intent is, “Okay Mr Criticism, if you don’t like SLCC, then why don’t you do something better?”

Well heck, I thought I had been doing that since March of 2006. I have been part of organizing ongoing events, facilitating the bi-weekly Teachers Buzz sessions, doing F2F conferences, coordinating live audio streams between the EDUCAUSE Focus session last March, we just finished out an 8 day full online conference in SL… Do I have to trot out my resume in response?

Or am I just supposed to stifle my observations and rah rah along with rest of the in crowd singing Kum Ba Yah? Can you teach me how?

Thanks, Anon for the illumination.

I think the proceedings are a crucial added benefit here for the community. That cannot be overlooked.

We very nearly did not have ANY projectors to work with at all. The conference planners didn’t think to order any. I brought three of my own because I wanted to do a more immersive presentation style with SL feeds on the walls. I got a call to my room early Saturday morning and donated two immediately.

We can do worse.

We accepted a VERY high percentage of submitted pieces. The intention was to give junior academics the fuel they needed to be contributors in the field. Bosses paid for travel, hotels, etc. I heard personally of at least two people who would not have been there without this liberal philosophy.

We can do worse.

Another barrier for some came in the form of pre-conference salacious advertising. The Ball. I made a personal invitation to one of the lead presidential candidates to do a call in. (One of the library associations has a president with connections.) I got a positive result up front and then nothing once staffers saw the ball schedule. The Deep Dish Trolley Tour was arranged to give an alternative. It was pretty well attended.

We can do worse.

The cliquey aspect was most unfortunate. I shouldn’t have done the joke awards and Dan warned me against it. That said, we are an emerging community of practice with quickly growing bonds.

My ideal conference would be completely hands-on. Each attendee would have a wireless broadband connection. Avatars and bodies would navigate the conference with equal ease.

Thanks for the comments here!

–jeremy

And judging from the feedback on SLED- the format fit for a lot of folks.

That said, this is part of my own long term pondering about how we do professional gatherings and hoping, hoping we start to see some more changes on the format- unconferences, virtual (SL) meetings are nibbling at the edges.

But if I go to the trouble of taking time away from work and family, fly to a distant land, live in a hotel surroundings– I am hungry for maximal experience for the exchanges, and thirsty for getting content I cannot acquire from home on my web browser. How do we construct those experiences? (I have not the answers….)

Thanks for the feedback, even if it smarts a little

From where I was, the breakout session on the Saturday seemed to go really well and did give people a good chance to chat – but you are right that there was not enough activity like that – and the feedback session made it clear that people wanted more.

More tracks, more chance to interact, more stuff for new folks, more hands on stuff, more coffee, more more, more opportunities to interact with people in world.

The last one at least had been intended – all along our plan was to have one projector showing action in world. Our *secret* plan was to sneak people in-world onto the odd panel whenever we could. The network borked that
We kept that part secret because we were unsure about the network quality – not ever suspecting things would be as bad as they were.

But lots of feedback and ideas for next years event – however it works its going to be a hard balancing act.