[LINK] Forum on high speed bandwidth in Australia

Pia Waugh greebo at pipka.org
Fri May 8 11:22:04 AEST 2009


Hi Tom,

<quote who="Tom Koltai">

> Pia, I have now anlaysed all of the tweets and I must say approximately
> 50 of the tweets should have been shown to presenters during the
> speaking programe.

That is a great idea, which is exactly why I had a second computer for the
speaker to watch tweets :) We found however that about 4 talks in, the
speakers were not really able to concentrate on giving their talk
(especially considering they had to focus on being concise with the time
limit) _and_ reading the rapid fire of tweets happening throughout. I ended
up assisting by watching all tweets and bringing up any questions asked of
the speakers at the end of each talk, and many of the speakers got onto
Twitter after their talk and continued answering questions for a while, so
it worked out ok on the day.
 
I agree that having either a moderated list of tweets or a different channel
for speakers would be a better solution, as the general twitter chatter was
too much. We asked people to post questions to @katelundy but of course
other comments went there too. Perhaps next time we can have a
#publicsphere-q tag for specific tweets to the speaker and display just that
to them while they are speaking, so it is both manageable while speaking,
but also avoiding having to moderate (and potentially miss) questions.
Speakers can always choose to ignore questions, but transparency at that
level is probably useful too.

I was tweeting the name of each talk within at (almost) the start of each
talk so that provides both context to participants but also a very rough way
to determine which feedback was for which talk. Am collating and will
republish this on the blog comments for the event. Will post here when done
:)

> In this way public engagement will increase and the true multimedia
> nature of the event will allow an accurate measure of public sentiment
> offering the Government a valuable feedback channel - that will
> hopefully next time be recorded for posterity with relevent sound/visual
> bites being released to the press.

Yes, that is what we are trying to achieve, and the recording was a real
pity, but a completely unexpected technical issue. We of course will be
ensuring the next one is recorded.
 
> I consider the "experiment" was a success.

Thank you, we are happy with the results, but know that there is a lot of
work to make this both better with the current tools, but more importantly
better with the integration and aggregation of data from other tools (email,
chat, etc).

> I still question twitter - but have been bludgeoned into submission by
> the quality of some of the tweets.

Heh, yes I wasn't completely sure of the format, having never personally
done it before, but it went really well and it really did keep people
moving, and where relevant linking to external further information. I was
very impressed and thankful to have such fantastic input from so many
people comfortable with the medium.

> And after all if every tweeter can see their tweets being part of
> Government - on the screen next to the presenter - well Democracy will
> start to gain trust from the Australian people once more.

I think for people to see their feedback in any form publicly available and
responded to by politicians is a great thing. We are already seeing more of
that with Senator Lundy's blog now that much more of the data is able to be
commented on. Transparency and openness, plus ease of participation, will
hopefully get a lot more Aussies engaged in the process.

Cheers,
Pia

-- 
 
                      Jeff: Whatchootalkin'boutwillis?
                            Pia: What's Willis?



More information about the Link mailing list