May events roundup

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Notable event happenings in May, a pretty eclectic bunch…

MailCamp, on 17 May, part of the UKGovCamp stable, is notable for using Storify for live coverage. This works quite well, especially with a mix of media (tweets, slides, images), although I prefer my wrap-ups to be a bit less linear. The 2011 wrap-up included an old favourite, the SlideShare presentation pack. Neat! Also a nice 25 things post from Dan Slee (21 May, event lifecycle watchers).

IslandGovCamp (25-27 May) put the remote into remote with an ambitious participation plan aimed at enabling people not just to follow but also to participate. There were session specific hashtags, Twitter monitors and session tweeters, but it’s not quite clear how well this came off, in part due to broadband constraints it seems. Mark Braggins deployed some eventamp analysis tools (TAGSExplorer | The Archivist | Sentiment140) and not least a puffin word cloud, but still waiting for much insight into the actual content – limited post-event coverage and curation so far.

As so often the stress is on the now…perhaps acknowledgement is needed that virtual participation can be different from face to face, maybe even time shifted, and calls for different modes of contribution? Reflections coming along rather later than usual – Mark Braggins’ Part 1 on the Orkney experience (5 June) | Part 2: #northernBLCamp (10 June) | Isle lights (17 June), So what does it all mean? (1st draft 20 June).

Thing with reflections is, they can be very personal, and that’s fine, but as an insight into the content at an event, which is so often is lacking, the N Things format continues to impress –  finally completed my first, 13 things on #heasocsci. Here’s three from the LGComms Academy from two contributors (Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3), leaving the impression that you can get something substantive out of an event you did not attend. An interesting point in Carolyne Mitchell’s account though – three days of presentations all felt a bit 1980s, time for some new event formats.

Feel the width…PELeCON happened in April but I’ve only just caught up with it. Used the full social media gamut – Twitter account, blog, YouTube channel, Lanyrd, Flickr and Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn event pages – to live up to its “create, connect, collaborate” theme. The Pelecon (brief), posted on the last day of the conference, summarises the “artefacts” being produced, including liveblogs from Oliver Quinlan, but any subsequent wrap-up is lacking – the booking form etc is still live on the conference home page…plus I’d love to see some stats on the ROI for each service. Turns out there’s a lengthy review by several participants in June’s ALT Newsletter, with links to related resources. All rather disjointed.

Data is increasingly rearing its big head – coverage from Eduserv’s Big data, big deal? symposium has been brought together on Lanyrd, nice to see someone using it…