In 2007, Lorcan Dempsey, a respected voice in the library and information science community and Vice President and Chief Strategist of the Online Computer Library Center, coined the term, ‘amplified conference’ which he argued allowed the presentations, discussions, and ideas at a conference are 'amplified' through use of networked technologies.
Mobile Technologies and the Amplification of Voices
Indeed, with mobile phones, netbooks, social media and networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, online chat), many interested participants who cannot physically attend a conference due to time constraints, airfare, or other reasons are able to seamlessly partake and even contribute to the conference simply by logging online to the world wide web. In all, there are eight factors which contribute to the 'amplified conference.'
The Eight Amplifications of a Conference
- Amplification of the audiences' voice: Audience members through the use of such social media technologies (such as Twitter) can create online discourse during the sessions in real-time, something not possible in the pen-and-paper days of conference attending.
- Amplification of the speaker's talk: With the widespread and inexpensive video and audio-conferencing technologies such as podcasting, presentations can be heard (and even seen) at anytime by an audience who are not physically present at the conference.
- Amplification across time: With low-cost technologies, presentations are often made available after the event, with use of podcasting or videocasting technologies allowing the talks to be easily syndicated to mobile devices as well as accessed on desktop computers
- Amplification of the speaker's slides: With social media lightweight technologies, (such as Slideshare) entire presentations can simply be uploaded, shared, and embedded on other Web sites and commented upon – which was not possible when Power Point presentations, if made available at all, were only available on a conference Web site.
- Amplification of feedback to the speaker: Micro-blogging technologies (such as Twitter) are being used not only as for discourse and knowledge exchange among conference participants but also as a way of providing real-time response to presenters even during their talks
- Amplification of collective memory: With the widespread availability of inexpensive digital cameras, photographs are often uploaded to popular photographic sharing services (e.g. Flickr). As a result, amplification of the memories of an event though the sharing of such resources ultimately enrich and extend the collective experiences of conference attendees.
- Amplification of the learning: With the Web resources and social media technologies, following links to resources and discourse about the points made by a speaker during a talk propagates the learning which takes place at an event.
- Amplification of the historical conference record: The ‘official’ digital resources such as slides, video and audio recordings which have been made by the conference organizers with the approval of speakers, complemented by the ‘unofficial’ resources such as archives of conference back channels, and photographs and unofficial recordings taken provides a more authentic historical record of an event.
References
Dempsey, Lorcan (July 25, 2007). "The amplified conference". http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001404.html. Retrieved on 2009-23-07.
