What follows is a guest post from Andrew Blanda, which he initially posted on his own blog. Andrew followed along with what was happening at Future Summit by engaging with those twitter users who were present at the actual event. I found he’s debrief below illuminating when considering the future of events and how this discourse can live within those not physically present at the event.  

May 20, 2009

Yesterday, I was a remote participant in the Future Summit held in Melbourne on 18th & 19th May 2009. I participated through Twitter, by interacting with attendees at the event, responding to questions & posting comments to various twitterers attending the various sessions on the program.

To me, it felt like I received a condensed, highly concentrated (as in I received the core nuggets of each presentation as it happened) presentation without the fluff. Do I feel like I participated? Absolutely yes! Through posing questions to the attendees and having questions and comments retweeted helped me better understand what was being presented and also to get a feel for the mood of the audience.

Things I liked:

• I got a good feel for what was presented
• I could ask questions
• I threw in some of my own comments (which were commented on by others)
• I had a number of my posts re-tweeted to a wider audience
• I picked up a number of new followers (which seems to be the holy grail of Twitter [to some people!])
• Having the Twitter back-channel provide on-the-spot comments from the sessions
  

Things I missed:

• The ‘hubbub’ that occurs in audiences when something contentious, alarming or incorrect is mentioned
• The camaraderie of the audience who shared some of my thoughts/comments – it would have been great to be there and interact with others

Things I inferred/picked up from the comments being made by the attendees:

• For one of the sessions, the panel kept asking/answering their own questions, not allowing the session to be participative!
• From the tweet messages, the wrap-up from Julie Bishop seemed to lose the audience and not really achieving it’s intention (of bringing everything together to a close)
• There seemed to be no actions/action plan we could see/walk away with
• Ultimately, I felt like I had been participated in this event, probably more due to the retweeting and interactions with other tweeters.I may even have opened up a can of worms with this comment I made:

It sure is a waste gathering people together to hear the panel talk amongst themselves! Save the CO2 and webcast it 

Who’s to know that next time they don’t just have it as a webcast, or a combination of webcast & live sessions – Twitter certainly helped me get a feel for things in real time!

I’d like to thank @SamMutimer, @mspecht, @kcarruthers, @geehall1, @amoyal, @nathanhulls + others for all retweeting my posts/asking questions! 

A final thought on Andrews post. We will be endevouring to stream some parts of the Summit live next year, pending how feasibile this is.

Welcome to the new Future Summit blog. This is an exciting time in the history of our nation and, more importantly, our society here in Australia. As many of you will know, Future Summit has been held since 2004 and is being held again in Melbourne on the 18th and 19th of May. Exciting because, even as we continue to contemplate how this Global Financial Crisis and other current world events will play out for us on Australian shores, there is a torrent of positive dialogue taking place within our communities about the different ways we can go about creating a better future together. I’m sure you have felt this too. This leads us to why we have begun blogging.

What will we use the Future Summit blog for?

1)      Discussing key topics:We plan to invite a small number of guest writers to the blog to provide different insights and thoughts about our country and its future. We are currently in the process of inviting these bloggers along. Let us know who you would appreciate hearing from by leaving a comment below.

2)      Keeping you in the loop about Future Summit: There will be official posts pertaining to Future Summit and the latest information and news from the event itself. This will include debriefs and summaries of discussions at the event, information about how you can come along, reminders about when key dates are and other timely pieces of information.

3)      Providing a voice: We plan to open the Future Summit blog up to those who might like to post their content to the blog here. There will be more information on how to go about this a bit later on (after the upcoming event!) but please stay tuned.

How can you get involved?

By clicking on the buttons in the right-column you can subscribe to receive the posts from the blog either sent to your email address or to your RSS reader. Once this is done, you can then comment on any post you like by clicking on ‘comments’ link at the bottom of each post. You can also discuss posting some of your relevant blog posts here at the Future Summit blog by contacting steve.hopkins at ausdavos.org.

We look forward to chatting to you more as we go. Please let us know if you have any ideas about how the Future Summit blog might be used. We are all ears J Until then, this is us, signing off for the first time.