SUMMARY: All you need to know is this: Click on this link www.masstlc2010 from anywhere.
- Your smartphone when you're at the MassTLC 2010 unConference,
- Your desktop if you can't come, and want to follow along. Cool real time tweets PER SESSION!
- Anytime after the event, browse to this location to view EVERYTHING about any session! Thanks Chris and Nick!
I love it when things work out great. I love it even more when they work out way better than you ever thought. And when you can even use software at a party (see below).
For last year's unConference, I asked Nick Tommarello to create an iPhone web-app (looks like an app, but no install needed) so everyone could know what sessions were on the agenda wall without having to go back and look at the wall. He did it, and it worked great. That system is still running, and you can look at all the sessions from 2009 at www.masstlc2009.org. Try it on a browser or an iPhone or Android.
This year, a new player came on the scene and really upped the ante. Chris Myles, who was part of the Anything Goes Lab session in July, came to me a few weeks ago and described a system for fully capturing everything that goes on at the unConference. Frankly, I was swamped with getting the conference going, and it looked really complicated, and I didn't have the brain cells to figure out how it would all work.
Well, fast forward to the last minute, the very time that Nick and I reserved for updating this year's smartphone app. We re-engage with Chris and I start trying to figure out how his whole thing works. Again, I'm kinda stumped. But then finally Chris tells me what I really needed to know: Just hook to these three links, and everything will work. Well today, we did that, and by gosh, this nice clean web-app connected to the Chris Myles megasystem actually works! It will allow all the attendees to capture and view tweets, notes, video, audio, and photos, all in real time, and all properly filed under each session.
So, here's a look at the system:
UI and Core System: (Nick)
- Broswer or web-app
- Ability to quickly add all the sessions to the database at the event
- Browse sessions on Android, iPhone
- Automatic generation sign-in and hash tags for Twitter
- Automatic generation of tagged/hashtagged posting via email
Back End Megasystem: (Chris)
- Build a Blogger page for each room/session (over 100)
- Put real time feed of session specific tweets on each Blog page
- Capture all session tweets in FriendFeed for archival storage
- Replace the real time feed with archival feed after the event on all pages
- Grab all the emails in a Gmail account (for archive purposes and replying to folks later)
- Send emails to Posterous Blog with proper tags per session
- Each Blogger page will later become the "curated" session history.
- Each session curator will be able to easily find all tweets and content in the Posterous unCut
- Each session blog page will have a Disqus comment section for threaded conversations.
Says Chris: "Instead of having all the Session content scattered throughout the webosphere, we will be gathering the content back into virtual online sessions. These focused virtual sessions will be used to curate key takeaways and content so participants, and those unable to attend, can continue the valuable discussions, shared knowledge and energy long after the unconference is over"
What does all this mean? It means that the over 600 people can truly document and at the same time observe, what is going on in all the sessions. And, for people who cannot come to the event, I believe we will have the most extensive, most organized real-time system for viewing (and maybe even participating in) a remote unconference.
Here's a portion of what the system looked like last year. This year, we've added automatic links to each session that let you:
- Sign into the session and tweet your attendance
- Take notes in the session , then email the notes, post to the blog, and tweet a link ...all automatically
- Take photos, video or audio, and then email it to the blog, which will automatically post a tweet to our handle, @masstlcun
Here's what the system looks like this year. Try it! on your phone or your computer. www.masstlc2010.org This year's unConference has four sessions (five was too many last year...people were exhausted!). We also have the system working for the pre-party, so when you get to an area, like Ping Pong, you can sign via twitter. You can then tweet with the hashtags, or maybe document the valiant wins or crushing defeats via email posts by just clicking the Session Notes link. You can also see everything that's been uploaded to the Posterous blog by clicking the "View Blog" button.
thanks to Nick for his work in both years, and to Chris Myles, for his wonderful new contribution.