Another piece written by me appears in Swift, the blog of the James Randi Educational Foundation, wherein I point out the mutually-beneficial relationship between social media and in-person conferences.
As I suggest in a comment, many organizers of conferences (especially skeptical ones) don’t yet understand the benefits that social media can bring their events. The biggest mistakes I’ve seen, both at big conferences and small:
- No decent connectivity at the venue stifles what could be a rich ‘backchannel’ conversation among attendees. This is of particular value to lecture-oriented events where attendees have few options to interact. (Interactive events mostly benefit from connectivity in allowing participants to fact-check questionable claims on the spot.)
- Hiding one’s list of participants. A visible and public list of participants can be a big driver of turnout.
- Sporadic updates on the event’s social media accounts. Lack of updates suggest the event’s organization is suffering, or that promotion is a low priority. Better to keep one’s participants in the loop to build excitement and set expectations.
Eventually I think that organizers will figure this stuff out, but it’ll probably start with our SkeptiCamp events and percolate upwards.
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