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Thanks, Lisa, for the link love as always! I think we are certainly getting to the point where speakers need to be prepared for some backchannel activity. I've seen a lot of good posts out there about how speakers can intentionally integrate this into the way that they present, and I think at minimum every association should consider including something in the preparatory information they send out to speakers about how to manage this, whether the specific conference has a hashtag speakers should be aware of, what options could be for speakers wanting to use a hashtag for their session, etc. I don't think it's necessary for all speakers to use the backchannel as part of their presentation, but at least to know what it is and that more and more audiences are using Twitter to discuss what they are hearing and learning.

Me again. I just read the full Danah Boyd post you linked to above and I felt quite awful and sad for her as I was reading it; but I wanted to make the point that I believe that particular situation was a perfect storm of things gone wrong, which could have been avoided with some empowering of both speaker and audience. For example, she was not allowed to use a laptop and was so blinded by the lights that she couldn't see the audience at all. Two strikes for the planners. She would have been more comfortable speaking had she been able to use what is a completely standard "prop". If she had been able to see the audience, she could have perhaps seen someone holding up their hand to ask her to slow down a bit - and the whole sorry fiasco could have been prevented. On the audience side, the twitter heckling got worse and worse because NO-ONE WAS RESPONDING. Meaning, again, that initially when people thought she was speaking too fast, someone should have been able to pause her and tell her that - just like you would if people in the back can't hear the speaker, or if the microphone goes out, or whatever. Then, the organizers did the very worst social media faux pas by trying to shut it down! Creating an even worse storm - directed at the speaker who had nothing to do with it. None of that would have happened with a little common sense.

I think the lesson here is that audience reaction plus speaker flexibility and/or responsiveness needs to result in actionable micro-adjustments - with respect on both sides - in order for everyone to get the most value out of a presentation.

First off, the conference planners of such a high profile and high cost event should be ashamed of themselves for the botched set up, poor preparation with their content providers and poor response when things went south, and the speaker shares some of the blame for acquiescing to conditions that were so clearly at odds with a successful presentation. I suspect this would have been an awkward, painful and spirit-killing event even without the back channel chatter.

But having said that, I find myself again scratching my head over how readily and regularly the ugly side of Twitter rears its anti-social head. Yes the audience had reason to be upset and the escalation of their discontent as conditions worsened was understandable . . . but what is it about having the ABILITY to sustain a level of back channel chatter in a manner that not only makes no offer to constructively ameliorate a bad situation, but actually escalates matters and deteriorates them further that makes otherwise sensible and reasonable people think they are relieved of any obligations for civility or even common courtesy? The reaction was arrogant and rude. In a Twitter-less world, if I found myself in that conference session, no matter how justifiable my anger, disappointment and frustration, I would NOT feel empowered to begin shouting about what was wrong. Somehow, from the safety and anonymity of our keyboards, we don't see anything the least bit wrong with being (collectively) just as disruptive to the event and individually engaging in a level of ad hominem comments directed at the speaker we would NEVER tolerate in an real (non-virtual) social exchange.

The main lesson I take from this mess is that backchannels should not be on the backwall.

Displaying the backchannel on the wall treats the speaker as if they were Spartacus 2.0, sparring with a stream of text. In keynotes such as this, the speakers are there to present their ideas, not read text messages from the people sitting in front of them.

Before anyone protests, I am not saying speakers should not interact with their audience. They can use higher bandwidth tools, such as sight and speech and listening instead of Twitter. They are all in the room together after all.