Category Archives: Conferences and workshops

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 11: Maddie Grant

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Maddie Grant of DC-based SocialFish has done a lot of thinking about connecting online audiences with speeches, panels and presentations. More to the point, she’s done a lot of doing, including convening one of the most ambitious online conference approaches I’ve seen: NTC Online, the digital version of the Nonprofit Technology Conference held every year by NTEN.

In our conversation, she offers some great advice for event organizers, speakers and anyone who wants to use digital tools to help online and offline audiences learn. And after you’ve heard our conversation, check out these links:

Social Change Institute: June 8-12 at Hollyhock

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HBW - Hollyhock Garden - thanks for 4M views

Image by ecstaticist via Flickr

I won’t be able to make it this year—and actually, it’s been way too long since I’ve been able to make my way up to Hollyhock—but there’s an annual event happening there this June that anyone should consider, if social change is their bag.

It’s the Social Change Institute, and it runs this year from June 8 to 12. I attended one five years ago with Alex that not only introduced me to dozens of fascinating people doing tremendous work in many aspects of social change, but also led to one of the projects Social Signal is proudest of, Tyze.

Here’s the word on this year’s Institute:

We are pleased to welcome you for the 2011 Social Change Institute at Hollyhock on Cortes Island. Join organizations and leaders working towards practical solutions to timely local and global issues, in a collaborative and fun 5 day intensive at Canada’s renowned lifelong learning centre.

Emerging themes and outcomes include:

  • Cross sector relationship building
  • Breakout Skills and Tools sessions
  • Inspiring and informative updates from selected issue areas
  • Case Studies: Participants focus as a group on an individual organization’s challenges
  • Focus Forums: Participant led hot topics
  • Confidential Problem Solving small groups
  • One on one intensive consulting sessions with experts
  • And everything Hollyhock.ca can offer you in terms of side benefits: fabulous local food from the ocean and garden, nature hikes, bodywork, hot tubs, socials, music, rest, and face to face time with the ocean and the forest.

Contact Hollyhock at 1-800-933-6339 or Stina at 604-612-8563 for more information. Or head over to our online home base: http://www.scihollyhock.org

Toonblogging on the iPad

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I’ve posted my final cartoon from BlogWorld 2010. It was my most ambitious toonblogging session yet: three straight days of wall-to-wall coverage. (You can check out the results here.)

Nearly all of it was on the iPad, using a Griffin stylus and Autodesk‘s SketchBook Pro. It’s a powerful combination, and the turnaround time can be incredibly short: once I’ve drawn the cartoon, I export it to iTunes on the iPad, sync it to my laptop, drop it into a Photoshop template, play with the text, export it to a PNG file, and post it via WordPress. That’s maybe 15 minutes from putting down my stylus to posting the finished image.

Could it be faster and better? Yes, actually:

  • The process of exporting to iTunes and syncing to my MacBook Pro is unusually convoluted for Apple. I’m hoping iOS 4.2 will finally bring a more streamlined, rational file management system to the iPad.
  • SketchBook Pro is wonderful, but adding a text tool would make it painfully cool. Add in a template feature and the ability to import fonts from my MBP, and I could circumvent Photoshop completely.
  • While we’re on the topic of SketchBook Pro, two or three more features that would make a huge difference:
    • Scrollbars or something similar when you’re zoomed in, so you have some idea of where you’re drawing, and how much room you have left
    • A larger canvas, so I could actually start creating something that approaches print resolution
    • Palm exclusion, so I can rest my hand on the surface when I’m drawing with a stylus
  • If I could figure out a way to upload the image to WordPress from my iPad (for the time being, hosting it elsewhere doesn’t really work), along with these other steps, I could skip the laptop completely. Some kind of “upload from DropBox” plugin for WordPress, perhaps?

But set aside that wishlist for now. I had a great time, I cartooned like a madman, and I met some terrific people as a result. Thanks for having me, BlogWorld!

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Join us at OSCON – and catch the session on Open SoSi!

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Later this month, we’re packing up the tents, band instruments and trapezes, and taking the show down south to Portland, Oregon for a week to attend OSCON 2010.

I’ll be cartoon-blogging the event – and Alex and I will be presenting a session on our Open SoSi initiative, the ongoing process of open-sourcing our intellectual property. It’s Thursday, July 22 at 5:20 in the afternoon, and we’d love to see you there.

Here’s the description:

Last fall, Social Signal principals Alexandra Samuel and Rob Cottingham took a hard look at our company, and realized something.

While we’d been telling clients for years to be as open and free with information as possible, we’d been doing the opposite with Social Signal’s intellectual property. Like any good consultant, we were keeping our tools and methodologies under lock and key – away from the eyes of competitors, but also away from people who could be putting those tools to good use.

So we began a process that turned the consulting model on its head. Instead of keeping our knowledge under wraps, we published it. We not only tolerated the idea that competitors might adopt our tools and potential clients might DIY instead of hiring us, but welcoming it. And we started with our flagship service, the workshop-centered Concept Jam.

Everything went online: templates, annotated PowerPoint decks, how-tos, scripts, reports and more.

Participants in this workshop will hear about what worked for us, and where we ran aground. They’ll learn the same hard lessons we learned about how much work it can be to document a resource to the point where it’s genuinely useful to others. And they’ll hear the surprising outcome: that far from wiping out demand for the Concept Jam, our initiative – dubbed Open SoSi – dramatically increased inquiries and leads, not to mention goodwill and our reputation.

We’ll work with the audience to draw out practical steps for any business hoping to harness open-sourced methodologies to their sales process. And we’ll hope to inspire others to free their internal IP, especially in emerging fields where sharing information can help all of us succeed.

Lessons from cartoon-blogging at the Real-Time Web Summit

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October’s cartoon-blogging at the Real-Time Web Summit was a well-received experiment in innovative event coverage. The response was overwhelmingly positive, the Twitter stream showed people appreciated the added dimension to the event, and the organizers were more than pleased.

Now, two things:

First, the ReadWriteWeb report, The Real-Time Web and its Future, is now on sale. Edited by Marshall Kirkpatrick – one of the smartest guys I know – the report sells for $300, and distills interviews with more than 50 real-time web honchos along with insights from the over 300 folks who attended the summit. Plus there are 10 case studies, 20 profiles of leaders in the field… and a package deal on the report plus RWW’s guide to online community management. Details (and a free sample chapter) here.

And second, I just came across some notes I took on the experience, and I thought they’d be worth sharing. As with most experiments, this one held a few surprises for me – and some useful lessons. Since I want to offer cartoon-blogging as one of our Social Signal offerings, those lessons take on a special significance.

Here’s how it unfolded, and how I’ll fine-tune my approach next time:

  • I arrived with my MacBook Pro and Cintiq, and settled in at a table. Handy tip: bring a power bar. Conferences usually max out their electrical outlets, and being able to turn one outlet into many is a valued skill (and a not-bad way to make friends). I have a nice little Belkin that also happens to have USB ports, which can be handy if you want to charge, say, an iPhone. As it turned out, I needed to.
  • I had hoped to live-stream my cartooning on Justin.tv (one of the event sponsors). It worked fine on both the Vancouver International Airport and Holiday Inn wireless networks, neither of which was especially fast. But conference WiFi is notoriously unreliable, and bottlenecks and signal dropouts made live-streaming impossible. If live-streaming is anything other than a nice-to-have for you, make absolutely sure there’s a rock-solid Internet connection.
  • If WiFi fails, you’ll want to have a Plan B ready to go so you can at least upload your cartoons – or email them to comeone who can. In my case, it was tethering: connecting my computer to the net via my iPhone. (Given the cost of data roaming for this itinerant Canadian, my Plan B would also have involved a second mortgage and possibly a night job.) As it turned out, the wireless connection was reliable enough that I stuck with it.

Now, what I’ll do differently:

  • While the main room for the event had plenty of electrical outlets, the same wasn’t true for the breakout sessions. And for that matter, the Cintiq isn’t exactly a mobile device; picking up, moving and setting back up was a time-consuming effort. Next time I’ll take my sketchbook into breakout sessions.
  • My digital SLR broke down right before the conference, which meant that when I did use my sketchbook, I was shooting with my iPhone camera. That required a lot of Photoshop work… which I ended up abandoning: the quality just wasn’t good enough. Instead, I wound up redoing the sketchbook in the Cintiq, which doesn’t take as long as you might think but took longer than I’d have liked. Next time, if this comes up, I’ll do bigger, simpler drawings, and shoot them under bright, even light.
  • This was a day that relied largely on breakout groups rather than keynotes or panels. Since most of the ones I attended were facilitated rather than led, they were certainly interesting… but they lacked the narrative coherence that can make for good cartoons. Next time I’ll choose more carefully (admittedly, a little harder with the spontaneity of unconferences.) And when a session has me completely out of my technical depth (a debate over whether a particular app has a RESTful API is a solid clue), next time I’ll have the humility to smile and leave.
  • There were several sponsors there, and a few made it into one of the cartoons… but most didn’t. I wasn’t playing favourites, but I wouldn’t want to inadvertently put the conference convenors into an awkward position. Next time I’ll clarify with the organizers in advance how to handle sponsors.
  • I learned a lot about my own workflow in cranking out cartoons and getting them web-ready. I discovered, for example, that it’s a lot more efficient for me to work in batches: do several sketches, then polish them, and then fire them off. But I’d made some assumptions about how things would go on ReadWriteWeb’s end (through no fault of their’s) and when those proved to be mistaken, I had some scrambling to do. It all turned out fine, but next time I’ll make sure I understand clearly how the workflow will go, establish the organizers’ expectations for the pace and volume of cartoons, and make a personal plan for the day.
  • We could have done more to think about presentation: whether the cartoons would have a stream of their own, and where they’d live. As it turned out, they did perfectly well as part of the ReadWriteWeb blog flow, but if I’d cranked up my pace, the day’s blog posts might have been lost in a cartoon sea. (We could have done more to feature them on the Social Signal site too, but as it happened we had a little competing news that day.) Next time, I’ll work with the organizers to suggest ways of presenting the cartoons in a way that enriches the conference experience without detracting from other communications.

The fact I took away some important lessons doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun, of course – I had a great time, learned a lot and, I think, contributed something of real value. And I can’t wait for a chance to do this again.

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Lessons from cartoon-blogging at the Real-time Web Summit

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October’s cartoon-blogging at the Real-Time Web Summit was a well-received experiment in innovative event coverage. The response was overwhelmingly positive, the Twitter stream showed people appreciated the added dimension to the event, and the organizers were more than pleased.

Now, two things:

First, the ReadWriteWeb report, The Real-Time Web and its Future, is now on sale. Edited by Marshall Kirkpatrick – one of the smartest guys I know – the report sells for $300, and distills interviews with more than 50 real-time web honchos along with insights from the over 300 folks who attended the summit. Plus there are 10 case studies, 20 profiles of leaders in the field… and a package deal on the report plus RWW’s guide to online community management. Details (and a free sample chapter) here.

And second, I just came across some notes I took on the experience, and I thought they’d be worth sharing. As with most experiments, this one held a few surprises for me – and some useful lessons. Since I want to offer cartoon-blogging as one of our Social Signal offerings, those lessons take on a special significance.

Here’s how it unfolded, and how I’ll fine-tune my approach next time:

  • I arrived with my MacBook Pro and Cintiq, and settled in at a table. Handy tip: bring a power bar. Conferences usually max out their electrical outlets, and being able to turn one outlet into many is a valued skill (and a not-bad way to make friends). I have a nice little Belkin that also happens to have USB ports, which can be handy if you want to charge, say, an iPhone. As it turned out, I needed to.
  • I had hoped to live-stream my cartooning on Justin.tv (one of the event sponsors). It worked fine on both the Vancouver International Airport and Holiday Inn wireless networks, neither of which was especially fast. But conference WiFi is notoriously unreliable, and bottlenecks and signal dropouts made live-streaming impossible. If live-streaming is anything other than a nice-to-have for you, make absolutely sure there’s a rock-solid Internet connection.
  • If WiFi fails, you’ll want to have a Plan B ready to go so you can at least upload your cartoons – or email them to comeone who can. In my case, it was tethering: connecting my computer to the net via my iPhone. (Given the cost of data roaming for this itinerant Canadian, my Plan B would also have involved a second mortgage and possibly a night job.) As it turned out, the wireless connection was reliable enough that I stuck with it.

Now, what I’ll do differently:

  • While the main room for the event had plenty of electrical outlets, the same wasn’t true for the breakout sessions. And for that matter, the Cintiq isn’t exactly a mobile device; picking up, moving and setting back up was a time-consuming effort. Next time I’ll take my sketchbook into breakout sessions.
  • My digital SLR broke down right before the conference, which meant that when I did use my sketchbook, I was shooting with my iPhone camera. That required a lot of Photoshop work… which I ended up abandoning: the quality just wasn’t good enough. Instead, I wound up redoing the sketchbook in the Cintiq, which doesn’t take as long as you might think but took longer than I’d have liked. Next time, if this comes up, I’ll do bigger, simpler drawings, and shoot them under bright, even light.
  • This was a day that relied largely on breakout groups rather than keynotes or panels. Since most of the ones I attended were facilitated rather than led, they were certainly interesting… but they lacked the narrative coherence that can make for good cartoons. Next time I’ll choose more carefully (admittedly, a little harder with the spontaneity of unconferences.) And when a session has me completely out of my technical depth (a debate over whether a particular app has a RESTful API is a solid clue), next time I’ll have the humility to smile and leave.
  • There were several sponsors there, and a few made it into one of the cartoons… but most didn’t. I wasn’t playing favourites, but I wouldn’t want to inadvertently put the conference convenors into an awkward position. Next time I’ll clarify with the organizers in advance how to handle sponsors.
  • I learned a lot about my own workflow in cranking out cartoons and getting them web-ready. I discovered, for example, that it’s a lot more efficient for me to work in batches: do several sketches, then polish them, and then fire them off. But I’d made some assumptions about how things would go on ReadWriteWeb’s end (through no fault of their’s) and when those proved to be mistaken, I had some scrambling to do. It all turned out fine, but next time I’ll make sure I understand clearly how the workflow will go, establish the organizers’ expectations for the pace and volume of cartoons, and make a personal plan for the day.
  • We could have done more to think about presentation: whether the cartoons would have a stream of their own, and where they’d live. As it turned out, they did perfectly well as part of the ReadWriteWeb blog flow, but if I’d cranked up my pace, the day’s blog posts might have been lost in a cartoon sea. (We could have done more to feature them on the Social Signal site too, but as it happened we had a little competing news that day.) Next time, I’ll work with the organizers to suggest ways of presenting the cartoons in a way that enriches the conference experience without detracting from other communications.

The fact I took away some important lessons doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun, of course – I had a great time, learned a lot and, I think, contributed something of real value. And I can’t wait for a chance to do this again.

Tweulogy

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(one funeral-goer to another, while a giant backchannel is projected behind someone delivering a eulogy) I'm just saying, not every event needs a backchannel.

Probably no need to mention that this cartoon was inspired by the Web 2.0 Expo debacle involving danah boyd, a Twitter backchannel projected onto a giant screen behind her, a speech that faced an uphill battle from the get-go, and a few audience members with some impulse control (and other) issues.

There’s a fascinating renegotiation going on between audiences and speakers. Twitter and backchannels are part of it, but I suspect something deeper is afoot. There’s a revolution sweeping all forms of communication – ask anyone who works for a newspaper or a record company – and maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that even something as seemingly timeless as public speaking would be affected.

But that doesn’t mean we have to be jerks about it.