The PLE Conference is intended to produce a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experience and research around the development and implementation of PLEs including the design of environments, sociological and educational issues and their effectiveness and desirability as (informal) learning spaces.

Whilst the conference includes a traditional research paper strand, we also encourage proposals for sessions in different formats including workshops, posters, debates, cafe sessions, hands on sessions and demonstrations. There will be a Spanish strand, so contributions in Spanish are also welcome!
We will also provide opportunities for unconferencing events, including the provision of spaces for informal meetings and discussions. Although the main conference takes place on 8th and 9th of July, there will be an informal launch event (with wine and tapas!) on the evening of Wednesday 7th.

As well as the face to face sessions, the conference will be supported by a variety of different online spaces. You can join the YouTube group for the PLE conference at
http://www.youtube.com/group/PLE2010CONF

Selected papers will be published by the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments..

Google Wave vs. Twitter at conferences

I missed the morning session of the TEL-CoPs workshop but the afternoon session was very interesting and Manolis Tzagarakis gave a really interesting talk about “Practical Lessons Learned while Developing Web 2.0 Collaboration Services for Communities of Practice“. One of the major findings was that you have to develop the UI at first and test this with your users and afterwards focus on the architecture. As we are computer scientists, we tend to do it the other way around. The other thing he pointed out is that the later you introduce features to a tool, the more unlikely it is to be used. There I presented my second paper about how to support CoPs with Twitter. I received mostly positive feedback back there was a heavy discussion about the way we visualize things. I take this critics and will improve future visualizations using visual analytics methods.

You’ll find my slides at slideshare and our tweets here and here.

Here are my slides for the Science 2.0 workshop

And these are the slides for the TEL-CoPs workshop

The conference itself was very interesting as I met some of the people from Twitter, and the Blogosphere live and in color. Even if I could not took so much with me for my further research the trip was worth it. The keynote panel gave some interesting views on the theme of Lifelong Learning and we had great discussions on PLEs and the use of Twitter. The next ICL will take place in Belgium in 2010 and in 2011 in Salzburg.

Thanks Martin, Sandra, Steve, John, Hendrik, and all the others for a great week. See you soon (at least online…)

After ICL 2009 I head over to Nice for this-year EC-TEL. There I may present two papers on the analysis and visualisation of communication in communities on Twitter.

I’ll be tweeting a lot, using the respective hashtags, so please excuse any inconvenience this may cause.

Thanks.

So does the application possibility strongly depends on the people at the conference and the type of official incorporation in the conference communication?!

Here are some statistical data and voices from the attendees of the TNC2009:

Did you have a Twitter account before the TNC 2009 conference?

What was your main reason to use Twitter during the TNC 2009 conference? (multiple selections allowed)

Do you think Twitter encouraged the discussion of topics presented during the TNC 2009 conference?

Please tell us why you think Twitter encouraged the discussion of topics during the TNC 2009 conference?

• 1. Getting a second opinion on stuff you hear, while hearing it. 2. Catching stuff that you’d have missed otherwise due to ignorance, bad hearing, noisy neighbours or such.
• Allowed for parallel discussions
• Because I didn’t twitter myself (just didn’t notice the track) but heard there was noticeable usage I assume encourage of discussion. I would have used it if I would have been aware of the track
• brings in participants from outside the conference, easy way to rate other people’s reactions that isn’t possible during short question times in sessions.
• Easy way to send clear and potentially discussion-provoking statements
• For me (in my case) twitter was useful because it gave me the possibility of discussing with my collegues about the topics we suposed were most interesting to us.
• It can be hard to find people physically at the conference in coffee breaks so you discuss with people in real time, but not in person.
• It can do a more interactive relation between the speaker and attendant.
• It was a back-channel for less formal discussion and occaisionally critical/dissenting views that aren’t readily expressed in the context of the session itself
• Tweets make it possible to make brief comments about what is happening right now, and to make topical, focused comments – and it makes it possible for others to get different perspectives on presentations and current topics.

Please tell us why you don’t think Twitter encouraged the discussion of topics during the TNC 2009 conference.

• A discussion should not take place on two different places.
• Not enough delegates were on twitter
• It was not even discussed among the attendees I spoke with.
• the conference is about meeting people – not about reading messages.
• TNC is a small conference. I can talk to each other and there is enough time for questions in the meetings.to send mails I must not travel to Malaga. “networking the networkers” does not mean: send mails!
• Too few people tweeting or following.

Please rate these communication channels according to your frequence of use during the TNC 2009 conference.

In your opinion, what is the added value of tweeting in conferences?

• virtually  meeting new people, added context to the presentations, feedback and evaluation from other attendees
• actually it is at least for some a way to give feed-back
• Another collaboration platform
• Getting hints on good presentations and novel ideas from people you know and trust. Sharing ideas. Learning about things “in real time”.
• Getting to know people interested in the same topics, sharing one’s opinion. Receiving hints about what s going on in other parallel sessions.
• Having fun
• identifying potential starting points of discussions
• In general, as part of backchannel discussion. At this particular conference, sharing news from the conf with people not attending in person.
• It is fast and simple way to communicate.
• low-threshold way of sharing instant impressions
• near real time communication (in the middle between sync and async)
• Quick and easy way to share ideas and raise issues during the conference.
• Quick, easy backchannel. Means of keeping track of other parallel sessions. Permanent record of thoughts and ideas.
• Rapid up-to-date info. Making contact with other ppl. Some fun (i.e. jokes), giving an informal contact.
• short and immediate exchange of thoughts and remarks
• Spontaneous opinion sharing without disrupting by talking.
• spontaneously expressing opinions, ideas, questions
• telling someone something in a quicker way than email during sessions (such as comments, requests, and so on)

In your opinion, what are disadvantages of using Twitter in conferences?

• Twitter is little bit messy. You have to follow right persons or anyone have to remember use those search tags like #tnc2009.
• Too much typing, too little following the programme.
• There is already so much multi-tasking and so many distractions during a conference that it is hard to listen to what people are saying.  Twitter adds to the noise.
• The need to learn a new tool
• Not enough of the delegates were on twitter.
• Might be distracting on some people.  I personally don’t think I suffer that much.
• It encourages people to make inconsequential remarks of short shelf-life rather than listening to the speaker who is talking.
• May distract attention to presentations
• during sessions pleople keep writing on their laptop. I know of conferences in which the organizers blocked wi-fi in session rooms.
• Could reduce the amount of direct interactions for those who are present in the conference.
• Could distract from potentially more productive means of communication. Although for Twitter, the level of distraction is probably lower than for other media for side conversations.
• anaouthe activity people deal with instead of personal communication

Here’s the abstract:

Communities of Practice (CoPs) have been widely recognized as effective environments to support learning among professionals, organisations and educational institutions. In this paper we introduce an application that analyzes written communication within Communities of Practice on the microblogging platform Twitter and allows the visualization of dynamics of the communiaction. As example we analyze and visualize the Community of Practice of the JTEL Summer School 2009.