Talking Trash at Les Blogs

If you followed the very recent Les Blogs conference, you have already read coverage of the fracas between Six Apart founder Mena Trott and BBC Backstage's co-project lead Ben Metcalfe and the issue of a backchannel live chat that was posted on the screen behind speakers as they presented. It involved a call for civilityand some interchanges generally regarded as less than civil by both central participants.

                                                                                                                                                            I I was in an apparent minority, taking Mena’s side during the debate and I remain there now. Let me tell you my personal experience, which impacts my view:

Robert and l got off to a slow start in our own presentation the preceding day much to both our disappointments.  About three minutes into a 45 minute presentation, I turned to the huge screens behind us where Loic Le Meur, the  host-producer was showing the back channel conversation as Robert and I struggled to find our stride.

“YAWN. This is boring,” were the first words that caught my eye.  The author was hiding behind an alias. This did not seem to me to be in any way constructive. It certainly did not make it easier for Robert and me to find our stride.  I cannot conceive of any way this was helpful to the audience either. Over the rest of the day, as other speakers presented, the negative commentary continued.  People who were not speakers continued to upstage speakers with this ongoing, overwhelmingly negative and snarky chat.

Tara Hunt, my Riya colleague, saw it otherwise. She wrote that she sees disrupting speakers via the back channel part of some wonderfully “magical extra layer.” My view is very different.  I see it more like attending an art exhibit in which you are permitted to deface serious endeavors with spray paint if you do not like them.

At the break, Ben Metcalfe approached me for a word. I was pretty much prepared to go toe-to-toe with him, but I ended up liking him more than I had expected I would. He mostly talked and I mostly listened.  He established that he was not just some kid passing nasty notes in the back of the classroom, but a contributing member of the blogosphere.  It turned out I was familiar with some of his work, and admired it.

He also made a couple of other good points. He told me that he was 24 years old and wanted to know if when I was his age, had I executed the levels of respect that I would now have him display. When I was 24, I told him, I was trying to tear down the US government, I told him. However, I later reflected, my government was trying to put me in uniform and fight in a war that I considered a lot more offensive than a mediocre speech. And when Mena Trott was 24, she was co-starting a company that has changed the world.

But Ben's second point is the one that has stuck with me. He said that at conferences he attends, the back channel is used and enjoyed by significant percentages of the audience.  They do this sort of thing all of the time. The difference is that at Les Blogs, they posted it on the screen while at others they did, well-in the back channel where the audience was not forced to watch it.

It seems to me, that came back to what had been Mena Trott’s central point before she blew her cool and got into a name-calling duel.  We should be more civil, when we are speaking about others in public. When we publish comments we should get our facts straight because those facts last a very long time through searches. People should speak online as they do when they meet you face-to-face.

But Ben's key point was valid it seems to me.  This chat stuff is part of free speech and those who enjoy it should certainly snark away. But, why on Earth it was being published tp upstage of  each speaker remains beyond me.  Even if it were favorable commentary, posting it behind the speakers is a visual distraction.  And for a speaker to see what is being said about him or her, she or he has to turn their back to the audience.

The incident would never have happened and people would be talking today about the mastery of Ben Hammersley’s eloquence, and Global Voices vision than about this molehill that has become a mountain.

Technorati tag: lesblogs

         

Comments

[Blaine Moore (Run to Win)]

Wow, that sounds like a very silly system.

[Tim Jackson- Masiguy]

Shel,

I somewhat followed the happenings and I feel that lots of things converged at one time to make it a "bad happening".

Mena, bless her heart, made the mistake of engaging in the name calling. That was her mistake and it gives her a black eye. Ben, though correct in his free speech leaning, was also in the wrong. Two wrongs, decidedly, do not make a right.

Mena is not wrong to ask for civility in the back channel discussions, since they are effectively in the front channel on stage with the presenters. (I too think that was a pretty odd decision.) That dialog, if there to enhance the overall conversation, needed to be executed in a way that more easily allowed the presenters to be a part of it and the commenters did need to utilize a level of respect and decorum. Maybe I'm wrong for thinking that, but I can understand how, as a presenter, a disruptive string of dialog over my head and behind me might make a little defensive.

I still wish I could have been there just to listen and learn, but from over here it seems that it could have been done better- by all and for all. I mean, isn't that part of the whole beauty of the blogosphere?

[Elisa Camahort]

Shel: I couldn't agree with you more. Not even as a conference organizer and speaker, but as an *attendee*. I simply find projection of a backchannel to be distracting, unproductive and certainly not what I pay my hard-earned money to view. If I want to, I can log on to the back channel and participate, but I don't want it put up, adding to my sensory overload! I wish I had seen this post when I wrote my post about this this morning, and am going to go add the link to this now.
http://workerbeesblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/backchannel-smackdown-continues-is-it.html

[steven streight aka vaspers the grate]

What a full load of crap.

Protesting the stupid counter-productive US involvement in the Vietnam Civil War is a lot different from disrespecting speakers at a conference.

Ben Metdaff sounds like a first class jerk and very amateur.

This backchannel junk is simply French Deconstruction mis-applied. Not what Derrida intended at all.

What this was: just a lame Performance Art rip off of the New York Loisaida scene circa 1984. I know. I was there, in the East Village.

[Evan Erwin]

Oooouch. Did you know about this before you decided to speak/present there?

"By the way there's going to be this long, distracting flow-of-ideas behind you, including people saying you suck."

Call me old fashioned, but isn't that a bit, uh, insulting to have that 'feature'?

[Jeremy Wright]

It CAN be really valuable at times. One of the first times it was done was by Scoble. At Gnomedex. And he and I had a conversation through the backchannel (I wasn't at the conference, but was listening to the audio).

I'm not sure it's necessarily "all snark" either. Most of the time there's snark, discussion, conversation. If it was all snark, then it was either all crap or the backchannel was full of the wrong kinds of people.

Either way, though, it should be optional. If you can't effectively speak with it going, then it shouldn't be on because the experience is diminished for all instead of being enriched for all.

[steven streight aka vaspers the grate]

This is just rehashed Performance Art. Sure, it can be used well or poorly, like anything else.

I think of tne New England music composer Charles Ives and his experiments with combining two simultaneous music performances or songs, blending and weaving in and out of each other.

In the Performance Art venue or genre, it usually is done when the two channels are relatively equal in importance. Thus, you can play your attention from one to the other, and not lose anything.

But when a speaker is up there with an informative speech, to have someone commenting in the back channel on how you suck, this is perfect for Junior High School fart jokes and Harry Potterized antics, not for professional presentations.

When Robert Scoble did it, I'm sure it was orchestrated better and respectful.

[David Tebbutt]

I'm afraid I pushed the story to over two million readers of the Register. It was the only LesBlogs story my editor was interested in. It amused us since Mena provides 10M people the means to say what they like, then calls for restraint.

It seemed to me like an 'Oh God what have I done' kind of thing. She let the genie out of the bottle and was now trying to stuff it back in. At least that was my position when I spoke to her after the event.

Most bloggers are civil, I'd say. And I was the idiot in the audience who suggested we put a badge on our blogs to show that we abide by a code of civility. On reflection, it was a bit pointless since the evidence would be in front of the reader.

When I attended the first LesBlogs, I expressed my horror at the back channel. I thought it rude, intrusive and pointless. Several people told me I was out of touch. And this may be very true. When I saw some speakers alter their presentation in the light of audience reaction, I was impressed. The responsiveness was impressive. When the backchannel came up at this event, I pretty much ignored it, not least because it was unfocused - I mean visually rather than content-wise.

dotBen was using vernacular which is very common in some cultures - the UK in particular. He was expressing a view about the content of Mena's speech. The word bullshit might not be particularly tasteful but it's not particularly offensive. It reflected my view that Mena was asking the impossible. No matter how desirable, to certain sections of society.

When called, Ben was absolutely right to make his position clear. He hadn't planned to be outed, nor had he prepared a speech. Given that Mena had, on both counts, I think Ben did a fine job of explaining his feelings about her presentation.

He didn't backtrack just because he chose more measured language. After all, bullshit was merely a summarisation of his views.

It seems a shame that the backchannel so unnerved you and Robert. If multiple contributors agreed, I wonder if this might have helped you, after the initial shock?

Take away the backchannel and we would have avoided the excitement. But would the conference have been more dull without it?

[steven streight aka vaspers the grate]

Probably not.

Wouldn't the content of the presentations be sufficient? Gimmicks are tools that put the focus on the tool, rather than what the tool is supposed to enhance.

If you have good speakers, why throw in chainsaw juggling clowns that set themselves on fire, just to generate controversy?

[David Tebbutt]

Hmmm. I didn't make myself clear. This question had nothing to do with the Mena stuff. It was to do with providing realtime feedback to speakers. If enough people are bored then a responsive speaker/moderator has a chance to raise their game.

[Andrea Weckerle]

Shel,

What struck me about your conversation with Ben Metcalfe was that he "wanted to know if when I was his age, had I executed the levels of respect that I would now have him display." The notion that not showing appropriate respect should be explained away by age is pretty sad. But then again, I recall when just a few years ago the then barely 30-year old CEO of a Washington DC-based dot-com called everyone over 40 out-of-touch "greybeards" who didn't understand business. He later got bailed out by the very greybeards he looked down on. The takeaway lesson is that we can better learn from each other in an open, non-hostile environment that expects -- dare I say it -- a civil exchange of ideas, without sacrificing creativity, originality or substance.

[shel Israel]

David,

I found you a pretty civil guy when I met you at the conference and I find your comments here both civil and constructive. So why did the Register piece have to be so taunting in its tone? BTW, this posting is my own. Robert was not in the room when all this took place and I have no idea on his thoughts regarding the backchannel. My guess is that he disagrees with me in this particular case.

[David Tebbutt]

Thanks for asking. I think part of the answer is "house style" the other part is the nature of the story that unfolded before us.

Had the Q&A stopped at the point at which you and I were publicly agreeing on the desirability of civility, I would have written a small item about Mena trying to 'stuff the genie back in the bottle'.

At this point, I sympathised with Mena's desire for civility in blogs and the press but regarded it as utterly unworkable. Certainly in Northern Europe. We are talking about cultural differences here.

(I teach people how to handle the press - when I am invited to North America, it is because the UK press is regarded as the most difficult. Handle them, you can handle anyone.)

I agreed with Ben's comments and I admired the way he stood up and expressed them.

And I agreed with (I think it was Marc Canter) that people don't have to read blogs they don't like. I used to edit a magazine and I knew that I had to deliver, every month, stuff that the readers found valuable. Get it wrong, you lose readers.

If people find blogs or papers uncivil, they can stop reading them too. And, especially, stop linking to them.

When Mena became uncivil - far more uncivil than Ben IMHO - the story changed. It became pure farce.

And, as you know, your request for a vote by the audience was not well received.

So I reported the whole thing factually, slipped in a few observations along the way and did it all in the house style of the Register. As always with UK journalists, we leave headlines, standfirsts and cross-heads to the editorial team.

I hope this helps. Please drop me a line if you would rather continue offline. I'm happy either way.

[dahowlett]

I'm with David and many others on this. Not because I'm British but because the argument would never have arisen had not Mena lost the plot and chosen to lash out.

But then I also think some of the calls for civility are hypocritical. How many times for instance is the Kryptonite case trotted out? Not exactly 100% civil there - were they? Or the Dan Rather thing?

A solid reasoned argument is usually more instructive than a rant. But it's a lot less fun than the Ben + Mena show. And at the end of the day, at least some of what gets written is meant to be entertaining - isn't it?

And finally, I don't see anyone arguing with the ferquently profane Hugh McLeod. A number of the speakers were sporting some of Hugh's more 'acceptable' cartoons. I don't see anyone calling Hugh out over his blog language - do you Shel?

[David Tebbutt]

I don't think Hugh gets personal does he?

This is a key difference.

[Geoff]

I still prefer the RSS feeds river of news idea as a backchannel like we had at Our Social World. That way at least people have to make blog entries or wiki changes to get noticed.

[Jeremy Wright]

Isn't blogging the backchannel for the MSM? Slightly less irreverent. Slightly less ontopic. Gobs more personal?

The backchannel at a conference is the same metaphor.

It's not always healthy. It's not always "on". And it's not always civil. But when it *is*, it's awesome.

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This is just rehashed Performance Art. Sure, it can be used well or poorly, like anything else.

I think of tne New England music composer jacky chun and his experiments with combining two simultaneous music performances or songs, blending and weaving in and out of each other.

In the Performance Art venue or genre, it usually is done when the two channels are relatively equal in importance. Thus, you can play your attention from one to the other, and not lose anything.

But when a speaker is up there with an informative speech, to have someone commenting in the back channel on how you s**k, this is perfect for Junior High School fart jokes and Harry Potterized antics, not for professional presentations.

When Robert Scoble did it, I'm sure it was orchestrated better and respectful.