I was unable to attend Yearly Kos in person, and happened to run across a few references to attending via the net, on Second Life or using the UStream video feeds. It seemed to me to be an excellent way to include a greater group of people in the convention. Nothing like attending it in person, of course, but better than not being there at all.
I thought I'd try using Second Life first, since I've got some experience with 3D gaming, and thought it might be more entertaining. I'd only found out about Yearly Kos on Second Life on Aug. 2nd, and didn't have time to try an install till Aug 3rd. It promptly borked my laptop, but I'm used to this...I don't give up so easily. I got it fixed, installed, and running, and went in for a look. Character creation, learning to navigate, learning how to communicate - these things took a bit of time. Finding the Yearly Kos registration area was surprisingly easy, but by the time I'd done all that it was very late on Friday, I was having a few technical problems again, and I had a dilemma. Do I try to register for the conference here, figure out what I'm doing, get my tech problems fixed, and see if the conference is still going on by the time I'm done? I decided to cut my losses and try UStream, which I'd also seen a diary about late in the week.
Ustream was much easier to get started, and although it didn't have avatars and flying and interactive music, it was pretty good. The UStream page had a video stream on the left side and a chat window on the right side, and when I first logged in on Friday, I could see a panel discussion going on. I was also surprised to note that a moderator was actually taking questions from the chat room and asking them of the panel! How cool is that? So, here's a way for people to actually participate in the conference remotely, and the chat box can serve as a great way to discuss whatever panel was being shown! Except...not so much.
There were some technical problems at times with the UStream video and audio, and the chat room quickly filled up with , well..chatters. We had everything from right-wing trolls, to one issue spam machines, to Rah Rah Rah spam for various candidates, to private conversations between a couple of the people there. (Don't people know how to start a private message window in irc?) And the chat window was fairly small. Most of the time, there was so much crap flowing through there that when a moderator asked for questions to be asked of the speakers, the responses didn't get read. Likewise for answers to people experiencing technical problems and needing help. At one point, when the audio problems were severe for a number of the people there, some of us tried to attempt liveblogging the panel discussion into the chat window, but there was really no way to do that with all the chatter.
Near the end of the day I Friday, I was searching for a schedule for UStream content for the next day. I knew there'd be some heavy-hitting sessions, and wondered when I'd need to log in to see them. Nobody seemed to have thought to put a schedule together! After asking for a few hours, one of the UStream guys got in front of the camera and read a list of planned sessions from a piece of notebook paper and I jotted them down and wrote them up in a diary. (Of course, the schedule had major changes later, but at least we had something to plan with).
On the plus side, the UStream people were working very hard whenever a problem came up, and would come back to the chat room to see if we'd seen an improvement, or were having further problems.
Despite the various problems, I still greatly enjoyed being able to see the panel discussions, seeing Clinton's session, and most of all, being able to see the Presidential Candidate's Panel. That was great.
On the whole , it was a positive experience, and I'd like to see video/chat opportunities repeated next year with some improvements. And yes, I plan to volunteer to help. Here's what I'd do:
- Publicize the net-attendance venues a little further in advance to allow people to get set up properly to use them, and adjust their personal schedules to make time for it.
- Prepare schedules for the online content and provide updates to the schedules when they change.
- Consider using a registration process with a minimal fee for the UStream convention room. It would allow some convention rules to be set for the chat room, and would keep most of the trolls away.
- Improve the video/chat room with content on the page which might include schedules, online conference rules, photos, etc. And since there were multiple (unused) video feed boxes on the page, use one of them to provide a live presence in the conference common room, at some of the parties, etc. to give the net-attendees a better feeling of immersion. Let the other attendees walk up to the camera and say hi, and read the responses from the chat room.
These are just my own ideas. On the whole, it was a positive experience, and I'd really like to thank whoever set this up for allowing some of us to watch Yearly Kos live.