"Miss Manners's instant feedback is that this particular forum must have done a remarkably bad job of choosing its panelists."

I'm not sure about the PDF forum, but that's often true about a lot of poli/tech forums. But I'll disagree with Miss Manners on some key points here: when you interrupt by voice, you interrupt everybody without their consent. On IRC, people are choosing to participate in a back-channel. It's like choosing to sit in the bleachers.

Certainly, if we want to make a back channel constructive, there have been plenty of suggestions for that. Here's a proposal I offered last year regarding back channel conferencing for promoting good guestions.

If there's a point to rudeness in the online world, it's to hasten feedback-- as instant feedback is now possible. But everybody's used to different paces of feedback.

If you can forward this all to your friend Judith Martin, I'd appreciate it.

Jon, I don't follow the logic of what you're saying. The panelists didn't consent to having the back-channel comments projected behind them, as far as I know. I didn't consent to it, as a member of the audience. The interruptions were systematic and imposed from above, by the conference organizers.

Bleacher comments should stay in the bleachers while the game is going on. (Note that Miss Manners did not object to chatter which does not interfere with the capacity of the audience to listen to the speakers.) Sure, a spontaneous interruption can enliven the show, and sometimes merits developing into a ritual of audience participation --the equivalent of throwing a home run ball hit by the visiting team back onto the field. But the PDF forum approach was an experiment that didn't work. A lot of what we saw on the screen did not fall into the category of constructive feedback. It needed to be edited, and structured (perhaps along the lines of what you suggest in your proposal), and projected at an appropriate time in the program, not while the speakers had the floor.

I'm sorry. I misunderstood this line: "Critiquing an event while it is happening is rude under long-existing rules"-- Miss Manners obviously meant critiquing publicly and instantaneously. So certainly I agree with her. And I agree with her conclusion "let's design something constructive?" (which is the thesis of Civilities.net rather than "let's use new/cool/open/disruptive technology" (the thesis of many).

When I saw Michael's post regarding the final panel during May's PDF conference, the first thing that happened was a big smile came across my face. I hadn't read the article yet but I was immediately reminded of one of the funnest times I have had a conference.

I was one of the panelists and for the record Micah was kind enough to warn me well in advance that there would be comments posted behind us. During that panel I think the folks posting comments called me “Darth Vader” and “Darth Maul” but being a Republican I am used to that by now (I was compared to Nazis and called a hippie during a December conference). No the comments did not elevate the substance of the discussion but I think everyone involved – panelists and audience – were enjoying themselves.

There were a lot of smart people in that room and I am grateful that I was one of the people speaking. While the folks that were in attendance would be better judges of this, I do think our panel offered a lot of substance and ideas from our unique perspectives. The comments were a distraction from the substance but I do think they were a great idea that with some more fine-tuning can be a great addition to certain panels at conferences.

I have moderated panels at conferences before and I actually prefer to spend more time on Q&A then on prepared statements by the panelists. This does two things: 1) the audience participates in shaping the direction the discussion is going rather than just sitting back and listening -- thus they get more out if it. 2) Their increased involvement increases the connection between the audience and the panelists. Four or five smart people aren’t talking at the audience, they are all participating in a big conversation.

The comments posted behind us panelists facilitated both things -- for better and worse. Better, because we interacted with the audience more, they helped shape the direction of the conversation and we all had more fun. Worse, because the comments did not elevate the substance of the conversation but so what. We go to these conferences to hopefully learn something we didn’t know and to meet other smart people, I think we can have a little fun while we do it.

My only fine tuning recommendation is to give all of the panelists laptops so they can post too.

I'd like to share a bit of background on this oh-so-meta conversation. Michael's original post and subsequent comments refer to a panel at this year's Personal Democracy Forum Conference, The Future of Political Media. On the panel, moderated by New York Times Reporter, Jennifer 8, were Chuck Defeo, Director of Online Strategy for Salem Communicationsl; Tucker Eskew, President, Eskew Strategy Group; Jeff Jarvis, Blogger, BuzzMachine.com; Arianna Huffington, Syndicated Columnist; and Jay Rosen of Press Critic.

Though the IRC backchat was a feature of all main hall panels that day, it caused quite a stir during this last panel. You can watch the craziness in our Quicktime video clip from the panel featuring Arianna Huffington. Or, read how I covered it in a post-conference wrap-up published here in May:

And then the gloves came off. As Chuck Defeo, director of online strategy for Salem Communications and Bush/Cheney ‘04 online campaign manager, praised the use of email as a means of message dissemination and rallying volunteers to take action, he was cut off abruptly by press critic Jay Rosen who yelped, “Why do I care about how you use email to get your message out?” With that, the crowd erupted, as did conference chat participants, whose rants were projected on a giant screen behind the panel. The chat seemed to steal the show at this point, attracting as much if not more attention than the pundits onstage.

Columnist Arianna Huffington responded suavely when the chat robbed her thunder. While speaking, Huffington realized that a burst of chuckles from the audience was not a reaction to something she said, rather to a larger-than-life comment hovering on the big screen behind her. She craned her neck for a glance at the chat screen and conceded, “That’s part of simultaneous reality.”

As the session wrapped-up, the energy in the room was potent, no doubt in part due to the immediate, almost visceral interaction enabled through the conference chat, which served as a virtual extension of the day’s networking and democratizing motif.

so, with that all said, for next time, what's the best way to accomodate the speakers, the audience, miss manners, and the master of civilities?

Couple of comments, coming late...

One is that we did tell our panelists in advance that there would be wi-fi in the hall and that we were planning to create an open backchannel that would be projected on a big screen during the panels.

Two is that for the panels that brought their own Powerpoint presentations, there was no projection of the back-chat, since the Powerpoints took precedence. If I'm not mistaken, that was the case during Mike Cornfield's fascinating presentation.

Third, I agree the backchannel could have been run better. For one, I think people should be required to use their real names if they want to post to the back-chat. That can be facilitated using a registration system in advance of the event. And we definitely have to give panelists the ability to read the backchat and add their comments if they like.

Finally, we probably should make the backchannel a more explicit part of the conversation, by having the moderator invite questions from the audience and make sure they get woven into the panel's discussion.

One thing people have to realize is that providing wireless Internet access has become de riguer at technology conferences. Once you do that, people will create a backchannel whether you want that to happen or not. The question then is how do we integrate this into the event, rather than act like it's not happening, or attempt to suppress it.