CONIECTO

This workshop has a long history... As I had to put in a proposal for a Global Software Development workshop at ECSCW'07, I couldn't also apply for organising a social software workshop. So I instigated a couple of friends to do so;) As none of them could actually travel to Limerick in September, they suggested to bring in as workshop chair someone they knew. I agreed, and I did my best to support the organisation of the workshop in any way I could: structured the workshop proposal, created a wiki space for it, got in touch with some of the potential participants and so on.

And when everything seemed to be under control - 8 people put in papers, another few expressed their intention to attend - the workshop chair writes from Crete at 12:50pm on Friday afternoon that he's not coming! Well, I had a lot of things to do for Monday (teaching from 3 to 4pm at the University among others), but I still thought I can handle things. I prepared a workshop programme and put it online.

At the BarCamp on Friday I asked Ina to help me chairing the workshop and cover the afternoon- she accepted as she was also interested in the presentations.

And then on Monday morning I went in at 8am, to check the internet connection and all the other details - iBahn who's taking care of the Hilton Internet connections only set them up that morning. Everything seemed ok - a student volunteer was designated for supporting our workshop and another one told me she would like to sit in for part of it.

Here comes 9am, horrible weather outside, rainy and windy, and I find myself in the room with the chief scientist from IBM Dublin and one student volunteer only. It didn't cross my mind to ask the workshop chair if he was in touch with the workshop participants. I spoke very often to the each and every of the participants in the GSD workshop - from their submission until the very last minute, so I took for granted that any other workshop chair was doing the same. Ok, the workshop chair wasn't coming and Lilia was going to present from Telematica in Enschede, but where were the others?! I checked with the registration desk - two other people had actually picked up their badges and conference packs a few minutes before. Few minutes later, I welcomed Birgit Krogstie from Norway and Antonio Tapiador from Spain. A bit relieved... At least we had 4 presenters . Lilia joined us on Skype - and the audio connection was crystal clear! She asked if she could invite Robert Slagter to join the call, and of course we welcomed him!

I made up a new programme on the spot, negotiating and moving presentations around. We started a presentation round. When Alexander Troussov started speaking about Lotus Connections and Galaxy, I wanted to send Lilia the YouTube link to their ad. In the process, I clicked on it by mistake and then felt too embarrassed to stop it. Must have sounded like shameless advertising for IBM, who was one of our sponsors. I apologised, and told them about the incident in Berlin, when Craig asked if the info was public and I replied "it's on YouTube!"

It was for the first time I was using an LCD screen for presentations and the text was not reading very well. The slide images were also distorted... And as if this wasn't enough, I kept on upsetting the attendees in the room with frequent switches between presentations and email/Skype - I had to send the other slides to Lilia as we went (I preferred this solution to a two-ways Yugma connection - I was too afraid I could crash the system!).

I went first, and got some interesting comments from Lilia and Robert. Then, in the middle of Birgit's presentation, Ralf Klamma came on Skype and his Skype window popped on the presentation screen. Bad timing! Lilia saved me by taking over the task of setting Ralf up-who finally considered the possibility of giving a remote presentation!

During the coffee break, Ralf tried to negotiate an afternoon time slot - as he had meetings scheduled in the morning. The man wasn't aware of what was going on here! I had to teach, Ina couldn't come to replace me, and there were no papers to present left for the afternoon! I asked him if he ever heard from the other participants - and he answered with nonchalance that he had two cancellations in his mail box! Couldn't I have guessed that?!

Lilia's presentation via Skype and Yugma went extremely well - and there were plenty of questions and comments after it. I was starting to feel better - especially because for 30 min I had no control of my desktop and I could finally relax and listen. Ralf followed - but this time I had to handle his slides, because he didn't have the time to get Yugma running. A few hicups, but it was ok. The last presenter was Antonio - we were a bit confused to see he had ~80 slides in a pdf file, but most of them only had one-two words on them, and Antonio's intention was to make a fluid and dynamic presentation. Out of the box it was - unfortunately his attempt to demonstrate live how easy it was to get an OpenID failed!

What looked like a catastrophe in the morning ended like an enjoyable and convivial little workshop - thanks to Lilia's professional support and to Robert's contribution! Thanks a million, folks, this is the kind of situation when you find out how precious friends are! One of the student volunteers told me at the end that she felt you were more present there than people who were actually physically present in the room:)

And under the heavy horizontal rain, four of us went for lunch to the Hunt Museum - very nice atmosphere, delicious food!

A few lessons learned:

• LCD screens have a different shape and size - presentations need to take this into account - no small fonts, images distorted;
• when having remote presentations during an event, make sure you have a second computer and Internet connection available;
• do something to make sure that your contacts won't try to contact you on Skype during the event; I changed my status into "live presentation - DO NOT DISTURB!" and it wasn't enough; I guess I should have blocked all the other contacts!
• installing the software in advance and rehearsing the steps for successful desktop sharing saves you from wasting time and running into trouble during the event itself;
• being a presenter and a facilitator at the same time is an extremely demanding job; if possible, get a person to second you as a facilitator (even one of the remote participants!).

Combining face-to-face with online facilitation is a hell of a job - you must keep your head very clear to be able to cope with it!

Labels: conference, ECSCW07, soso, workshop