[LINK] Forum on high speed bandwidth in Australia - this Thursday

Pia Waugh greebo at pipka.org
Tue May 5 04:06:31 AEST 2009


Hi Tom,

<quote who="Tom Koltai">

> The word "apparently" doesn't bode well and sources for the other recent
> conference would be interesting.

It was AdTech, and although I wasn't there, a friend (Dr Silvia Pfeiffer)
was who originally suggested it to me as a great medium that worked well at
that conference a few weeks ago.
 
> A search of Google "twitter as a conference tool" returns nothing of
> substance.

Heh, it is being used in this way only fairly recently, so that doesn't
surprise me.

> > Heh :) We can all experiment together. 
> 
> That's the problem. Experimentaiton is fine when it is in a small closed
> user group.  Not so fine when the venue is advertised as Open Government
> with nice warm fuzzies like "public sphere" 

The Public Sphere events are an idea, and the implementation will take some
working out. We have shown how we are intending to run the first one, and if
it works out well, great, if not, we try other technologies. I don't see the
problem here.
 
> There is nothing meaningful that can be said in 140 characters.

As mentioned, longer opinions can go on or be linked to the blog comments.
The sort of feedback we expect during the day should easily fit into 140
characters, as it should be short, snappy, concise responses to the topic.

> But imagine if question time in the house was mandated to be run using
> only twitter?

It is quite different, but I'm sure many people would appreciate if question
time was more short, concise answers :)

> I consider this misuse of technology to be unfrotunately a blatantly
> obvious censorship exercise.

Well, that is a pity, and you are of course free to make that comment on the
blog if you want. I don't think it is at all a censorship exercise, and I
hope it will break down the barriers of entry to people who want to
participate in a discussion like this. Wee may move to IRC to make it easier
and not so limited in terms of characters, but having been on many many IRC
meetings, they often end up being monopolised by a few people who want to
say a lot, (which feels rather familiar) and the stream of knowledge  is
linear, whereas the thing I like about Twitter is it isn't linear, it is
people talking to the topic, to each other, making additional remarks, and
whatever.

> For the event to be meaningful, by all means include twitter together with
> a purpose built chat forum that is also available on the day.

We'll certainly look at that for the next one, but don't want to change
horses two days out. The next event will likely be 4-6 weeks after this one,
and we'd love more suggestions like this.

> For Open Government to work - the Government has to be able to listen as
> well as speak.

Absolutely, which is pretty much the point of this exercise.

> I maintain that Twitter is not a tool that allows constructive meaningful
> feedback.

Sure, thanks for your feedback. We'll see what happens on the day, and then
likely integrate some other tools for the next one.

Cheers,
Pia

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