Backchannels - Spicing Up The Conversation

When you are next running a class or meeting wouldn't it be great to harness the power and energy of the audience to enliven your presentation? As they tap away on their laptops and blackberries - why not give them a secondary communication channel to capture their thoughts? By setting up a simple and free backchannel you can encourage your audience to get involved immediately with questions, suggestions, and free flow thoughts - all posted instantly to a real-time exclusive micro-blogging site.

Using a backchannel requires a more exploratory and experimental presentation style (welcome to the web 2.0 world!) and to truely succeed requires a lot of flipping back and forth to the channel to check what was posted and reacting to the audiences input. You could use Twitter or even Yammer, although people would need to have an account and be registered. However, you could also jump to another option like Todays Meet - no need for registration, you just name a new channel and provide the web link to the audience. They can post directly to the site with or without a username. Ideally, its good to know who posted but the real objective is to get people actively contributing. Keep in mind this is a great tool to use for creative and open meetings where active input is needed and encouraged - this is where PowerPoint takes a backseat. With straight to the point, one topic presentations - maybe this is not the right option. Advantages:

• Audience become more engaged and participative
• No-one needs to wait until the end of the presentation to ask a question
• Prepare questions in advance and post
• Allow people not attending the conference to participate
• Provides a useful archive of the audience's feedback
• Presenter/Tutor gets realtime feedback from the audience
• Anyone can supplement what is presented with links, stories and contacts

Backchannel sites: Todays Meet, Twitter, Yammer, Coveritlive

Give it a try at your next meeting or class. If anything, it gives the Backberry users something to write about.

Mir:ror: RFID tags for Training?

Not sure if anyone has a Nabaztag. This slightly quirky idea orginated in France a few years back. I bought one about two years ago much to the dismay of my family (we are still talking). Its an interactive Rabbit that connects to the Internet and pulls in news, information, messages, and a whole host of audio and (visual) driven wireless services. Now from the same company comes Mir:ror which brings the world of RFID tags to the home or office. Basically you buy a batch of RFID tags (called Zstamps) and stick them on everyday objects, even people. Once you hold the tags over the Mir:ror which is connected to your computer it reads back associated information or can even send information to Facebook, open files, or email a message, etc. depending on what was programmed for that particular chip. Stay with with me on this as it is hard to visual why you would even bother. Lets say you have a training event. You could programme a bunch of tags and include them on the printed invitation. Once a student flashes the tag over his/her Mir:ror it pulls up a website or multimedia files to support the training. It could potentially also be assigned to student profiles. Once they come to a training venue you pass the tags over the Mir:ror and they are fully confirmed as registered. Saving on admin work. I am sure I could think up loads more ideas but lets leave it at that for now. Try it for yourself - the future of learning is in your hands.

Tired of PowerPoint?

Don't you just love preparing for your meeting? 2 AM with a gallon of strong coffee and you are still preparing slide after slide after slide. Yawn. Fun? What if there was an alternative to PowerPoint? Imagine if you could present in a way that got your ideas across but in a more creative way without losing your audience. I've been messing around with prezi an online presentation tool that tries to break the mold. I am still trying to get my arms around it as it does need a bit of a rethink in how you create your presentation. But the options to manipulate text and images are pretty cool and there are some terrific examples of good Prezis out there. Bring out the artist in you for your next meeting and wow your audience. Ok I made that up. Anyway, play around with it and see if your audience put away their Blackberries at your next 15 minutes of fame. I gave it a whirl: here. Not exactly Van Gogh but different. Playing it back also requires a certian skill as you zoom in and out and around and pull back and zoom in...you get the picture. Its all online and has a free package option so you can determine if this is really for you. I highly recommend it - even if it seems slightly erratic and out of control. What could be better at your next meeting?

Online Editing Tool

This is a terrific tool for when you need to edit or create that all important image and don't have Photoshop or other image editing tools onhand. All you need is a web connection and you are flying. Go to pixlr and you can upload and edit any image directly online in a fast intutitive well designed software package. If you have used ImageReady or PhotoShop then all the controls are well known to you. Give it a try. Best of all...its free.