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Backchannels are all the rage at tech events these days, connecting presenter and audience like never before. They allow audiences to get more value from a presentation by communicating with each other about it. And the audience can feed back to the presenter, which helps him stay on track and know that he is being understood.
But there’s a point where a backchannel goes beyond adding interactivity to an event and begins to undermine the event itself. In November, I witnessed this at the launch of UXMTL, a community for user experience design in Montreal.
Twitter has made setting up backchannels trivially easy — with or without the consent of conference organizers — since anyone can start a Twitter backchannel simply by using a hashtag. Unlike Google Moderator or Backnoise, no specialized software is needed. At UXMTL, the event organisers simply announced that audience members should use the hashtag #uxmtl on Twitter, and all tweets for that tag were displayed on a large screen behind the panelists, using Twitterfall. For me, this completely changed my experience of the event, both as an audience member and a backchannel contributor.
Why are backchannels popular?
Olivia Mitchell has explored the popularity of backchannels in depth, and many insights can be gained from discussions about them. For the audience it’s mostly about being able to communicate with each other in context – seeking clarity, sharing insights and innovating or building upon what is being said.
Where backchannels really come into their own is when presenters can receive feedback and and adapt to it while the event is still ongoing. We experienced this for ourselves running the Enterprise Cloud Summit back in May. Thanks to the #ECS hashtag we were able to discover sentiments like this and address them quickly on stage, averting any possible audience backlash.
Problem #1: Self-censorship
Usually when I’m listening to an interesting session, I’ll tweet frequently, quoting key points or sharing my own insights and musings. But knowing that my tweets would be on center stage was paralyzing. My first reaction was one of fear: “I don’t want my tweet on stage, I’ll feel self-conscious”. After a while, I made a conscious effort to rebel against this and resolved to tweet as normal. But it wasn’t the same. Every tweet had to be much more carefully crafted, and knowing that a tweet could steal the focus of the audience, carefully timed. This was a bizarre new experience for me.
Problem #2: Breaking the flow of the event
It wasn’t just my behavior that was affected, but that of the panelists too. Often, I saw them zoning out of others’ answers, leaning over their shoulders to read the screen, overcome with curiosity at what the audience was saying and looking at.
The tweet stream was a distraction to everyone. Sometimes someone would crack a joke on the backchannel, and the audience would burst out laughing, interrupting the speaker’s flow and causing the conversation to go off topic. I found myself hitting send during moments of laughter or applause so as not to interrupt a key point or distract the speaker.
Problem #3: Breaking the flow of the event
In the backchannel, new social games began to emerge, like rating the panelists while they speak or pointing arrows to panelists’ heads. These tweets took attention of other audience members away from the speakers. People were starting to engage more with the conversation than the content. There was a funny side to these games, but it wasn’t the right time.
As a commenter notes here, backchannels can become a problem when both the presentation and the backchannel are cognitively demanding. We only have so much attention to give, and despite the trend towards multitasking, humans are not wired for dividing our attention, and some studies suggest it can even be harmful.
The start of a worrying trend?
I was dismayed to learn that SAP have launched a tool to let you include a Twitter stream in your presentation. I cannot see any benefit to including this kind of distraction. There are a number of recent examples of presenters being humiliated by their audiences via backchannels. Danah Boyd was recently chastised by the Web2.0 Expo audience, who used the projected backchannel (or “frontchannel”) to effectively talk behind her back. This can bring out the very worst in human behaviour, and with no feedback to the presenter, the balance of power is shifted too far towards the audience.
As a presenter, you’re responsible for the results. You hold the mic, you have the authority. But having a backchannel take center stage gives that away. The audience have the authority but none of the responsibility.
Scott Berkun writes about speaker/audience power dynamics in “Confessions of a Public Speaker”:
“When you allow someone in the audience to speak, you are giving him the floor and with it, some of your power… You are judge, jury and executioner… Never be afraid to enforce the rules the room wants you to follow… When you enforce a popular rule, you reengage everyone… You restore your power and earn the audience’s respect… So don’t hesitate to cut off a blowhard or silence the guy on his cellphone.”
The Conversation is not the Event
Allowing the audience to take control from the presenters is a step too far. We need to draw the line here. Twitter is great for getting news out instantly, but it seems now it’s going even further, and the commentary is becoming part of the event itself. Already we see Twitter comment streams on CNN and “photos from our viewers” on the BBC. I believe that to be fully absorbed content needs to be left unadulterated by others comments or views, so that we can form our own opinions before being influenced by others, or worse, before the presenter is forced to change tack.
And that’s not to mention the creative aspect. We would never interrupt a concert pianist, magician or performance artist, so why should public speakers be any different? Allowing the conversation to dominate steals the creative freedom of the presenter, forcing them to bend to the will of their audience.
So how should we use backchannels?
What we need is careful control in the ways we use backchannels, so that presenters can get feedback without being distracted or losing control. Here are some examples:
- Only display moderated highlights from the backchannel, at the times you choose (or better still, never show the backchannel at all. Keep it separate).
- Check the backchannel during scheduled breaks (which is what we did at ECS) and take necessary actions in the next session.
- Have a colleague monitor and participate in the backchannel on your behalf, bringing important sentiments and questions to your attention – a sort of “ombudsman for the audience“, as Alistair did for Sean at Web2Expo (shown above).
- Have regular “Twitter breaks,” as Robert Scoble suggests.
- Use software like keynotetweet to send triggered tweets into the backchannel as you hit certain slides. This can help keep the backchannel conversation on track.
- Include live polls in your presentations with software like PollEverywhere. This is a good example of inviting audience feedback but keeping control.
These are the ways that I think work, and are effective, adding value for presenter and audience alike. But of course there are always risks with any backchannel. The crowd may turn against you, especially if they become more interested in the discussion than what you are saying. There is more pressure for you to deliver value. This is particularly a danger in classroom situations, where audiences may be less motivated. But in most cases this can be managed by ensuring someone is attentive to what the audience is saying, moderating and guiding the discussion, and feeding important things back to the presenter.
Above all, keep control, and keep focus. Do not use backchannel technology just because you can. Use it wisely and sparingly, only when it will enhance your audience’s experience.
I’d like to reiterate that I am not criticizing UXMTL. I enjoyed the event and look forward to getting involved with the community and attending future events. The purpose of this post is only to discuss the wider issues the situation raised for me. What do you think? Are backchannels worth the effort or should they be avoided?
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Alex,
I could not agree with you more. I would venture to say that this kind of technology should NEVER be used during a live presentation. There’s no difference between having a backchannel behind the speakers vs. having a bunch of people in the audience chatting loudly during a presentation. Most speakers work very hard on putting together valuable presentations — what a waste of their time (and the audience) if their message is diluted because attention is focused elsewhere.
I came back from a conference last week that had a Twitter wall/screen set up in the main hallway. So during breaks and between breakout sessions, it was up for all to read. Everyone loved it. THAT was the perfect use of this technology.
Your words of wisdom: “Do not use backchannel technology just because you can.” Hear hear!
p.s. Thanks to Alistair who posted this on his Twitter.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by alexbfree: New Bitcurrent post: The perils of backchannels… Why Twitter should never take center stage http://bit.ly/6wJ0rx #uxmtl…
Hey Alex — great post, very interesting points and well thought-out arguments.
Firstly, I’ll explain a little more about the Twitter “backchannel” in context of the UXMTL event, then I’m going to throw in a few more general additional thoughts.
Backchannels have always existed — as Olivia Mitchell puts it, it used to be “whispers and hand-scribbled notes”. Backchannels came into proper being in IRC days, and UXMTL certainly wasn’t the first that decided to bring the backchannel to the front. UXMTL as a group is intent on experimenting with how we’re reaching and communicating with our audiences, and how we can facilitate interactive/active learning, so our plan was never to have one-way presentations — or in this case, a panel. Amongst ourselves, we had debated on the wisdom of projecting the backchannel, and decide to just try it and see if it would work for our crowd. Our panelists were forewarned, and they were equipped with a separate computer in front of the stage should their eyes wander, so they didn’t have to physically turn around. Unfortunately, spotty wi-fi at the venue meant the computer at the front wasn’t useful.
I would agree that projected backchannels can be very distracting during presentations, but in my several-year experience as a panelist and also a panel moderator — I’ve also played the role of Twitter/IRC watcher who brings questions from the backchannel to the panel itself — I have learned the backchannel can provide interesting meat for discussion in the case where the audience is engaged. In fact, the best part of any panel is traditionally the question/answer session. The few snark comments you have pointed to were the few distractive responses to UXMTL (and in truth, the opinions could have been better expressed), whereas there were also plenty of positive ones. For this particular UXMTL event, we were also using Twitter to document the panel discussion itself. The nature of panels as they are, panelists can sometimes become too caught up with talking to one another and forgetting that there’s an audience, and we wanted to find a way to involve the room in an open discussion. With a room of only a hundred people, we thought the more intimate context could lead to interesting conversation. While I think we were successful in engaging everyone that night, we perhaps didn’t choose the best way to manage the backchannel, and that will be something we continuously refine.
General thoughts: as a presenter myself, I’m very aware of the work that goes into a presentation — my average prep time for a talk is as long as two and a half months and I still refine my slides just before my presentation after seeing other sessions to make sure my talk remains relevant. However, there’s something that presenters forget. We sometimes fool ourselves to believing that we’ve got the stage because we have something wise/smart to say, or that we’re bringing something new to the audience, but this is not always true. My humble international speaking experience has taught me that individuals in my audience may have more experience than me, or their experience could be contradictory and just as interesting/valid. My role as a speaker then is to open a conversation to a topic, provide a thought-out angle and let the audience respond — whether in agreement or disagreement. The point is for us all to learn from one another, regardless of the who’s got the microphone. If as a speaker you’re too arrogant to understand that people will respond to your talk — sometimes unfavourable — perhaps you should assess if your talk is of real value, or if it only serves your ego. Backchannels put us as speakers back in our place. If we cannot win over our audience’s attention by what we have to say or allow them to engage with us in a different medium other than hearing our voice — we’ve got a real problem.
The thing to remember about a backchannel is that it becomes a different form of communication and engagement that we’re all still experimenting with it — there aren’t and shouldn’t be hard and fast rules as it’s very context dependent. One thing I do like about the projected backchannel is that now it forces everyone to be responsible for what they say. You know exactly who said what snarky remark, and you can leave it to the crowd’s wisdom to agree with them or think them an idiot. Having been part of backchannels often in the past myself, they do get a little nasty, and I think *that* is even more unfair to the presenter to talk behind their backs. Backchannels happen anyway. If you got something to say, be responsible for what you say. Projected channels, as they are, hold us all accountable.
We have a long way to go to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and I’m grateful that you wrote this post with some of your ideas.
If something is so important that you decide to give it some of your time (the most scarce resource, barring none) then, it probably deserves that you turn off your cell and your computer and give it a few minutes of undivided attention. ADD is a mental disorder, not a way of life.