Virtual Transformation of Experience (in Conventions and Conferences)
As some of you know, I’ve been working on virtual conferencing and virtual transformation the last couple of months (shocker), and one of the biggest challenges is transferring the con attendee experience itself, rather than the content. I’d like to open that up for discussion, and learn from others’ experience.
One of the things that bother me about such video conferencing, or as it’s now known, zoom, is that even when leaving out the experiential aspect, when interacting, people revert into a performative state (thanks Ryan Moon for that terminology).
With that in mind, the only fully active and interactive sessions I’ve seen consistently come to be, are “Friendly” unstructured Zoom happy hours. And, sometimes, unpredictably, through chat activity.
My latest thinking is trying “we’ll be talking on X at 2 PM on this Zoom, join us.” And trying to keep the conversation flowing.
This could work for many cases depending on multiple parameters such as number of people present, pre-existing relationships, active vs. lurking, trust, and openness to discourse in general to name a few.
So, naming this to make it clearer: An unconference of limited-size with unstructured panels.
With thanks to Dragos Ruiu who has been giving these things even more thought than I have, and to Daria Medved for schooling me on these topics daily.
Gadi Evron.
(Twitter: @gadievron, Facebook: @gadioncyber)
