Triggered by a tweet, I re-read roo’s blog on backchannels today. The only backchannel experience I’ve had was on the W3C WS-Addressing Working Group. W3C Groups share information and take minutes straight into an IRC chat. ‘/me’ messages are considered to be out-of band comments, and are not included in the minutes. The IRC chats are used in both telecons and face-2-face meetings, with slightly less going on in them during the face-to-faces, though the IRC may be on a projector.
Initially I didn’t really understand the way it is used, particularly some of Paul‘s comments.
In both scenarios, it’s really useful to type while others are talking if you’re looking for a clarification, or have a useful comment to share, and don’t want to interrupt the flow or someone talking… which is particularly difficult to do on a call anyway where you can’t see how people are reacting. It is also used on occasion to undermine people and arguments before they are fully formed which can be useful or really frustrating.
The third use, that Paul is particularly good at is lightening the mood. Often with truly awful jokes. Nevertheless, even a bad joke can jolt bored people into life again, and reinforce the idea that we’re humans working together, rather than faceless representatives of our organisations. With the ‘/me’ notation, these jokes are very easily ignored if you’re not interested, so they are very low cost.
I miss all of these uses when on telecons without a backchannel, which is most that I’m involved in at the moment. In those that do have backchannels, the same social norms about the channel aren’t the same, particularly there’s no recognised way to indicate that your comment can easily be ignored.
All that I can take from that experience to the idea of a conference backchannel, which is a slightly different environment is a belief that it’s probably a useful idea, that social norms can prevent abuse, and that including a mechanism to allow ignorable comments to be easily identified would probably be important.
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