Conference Session Commenting and Aggregation.

We need a major upgrade for this RSS syndication at it relates to conferences and educational programs.

I was just reading post by Anil Dash about a session he's doing at Voice on the Net Conference.

Anil links to the conference page with the session descriptions and times, but this is not nearly enough information. We need to turn all session descriptions for all publicly-accessible events into RSS feeds. This way speakers and attendees could easily comment on sessions they will attend, are attending or have attended - the same goes for speakers as well.

Right now, there is no convenient way for presenters/attendees to reference educational sessions. As a result, we all lose out because we can't build on comments that people have about specific educational programs. It would be a lot easier if I could subscribe to RSS feeds for specific types of educational sessions that were of interest to me. And then I could quickly comment on selected sessions.

In addition we need some type of aggregation and metadata system so that we can link educational programs and related posts about these programs in some coherent way. Say for example, I want to find all educational sessions and related weblog posts about how to set-up a Wi-Fi network. There is no fast, easy way to do this. But if conference producers, attendees and speakers agreed on some type of trackback mechanism or metadata system for aggregating and publishing RSS feeds, then we could solve this problem. Maybe others can help me with this?

[Doug Fox -- The Future of Meetings]
9:58:17 AM    

Creating Topics in RSS.

Matt Mower has post that caught my attention on Exploring Topics in RSS 2.0. I don't have enough background in working with RSS to understand the details, but I like the idea: how do you implement a process for encoding topic information within your weblog posts.

By adding topic information to posts, it is then possible to connect posts from multiple users who are talking about the same subject matter. Getting back to the world of meetings, I think it would be great if there was some type of naming convention or protocol - I don't know right terminology here -  so that a blogger could identify a specific post with 1) a specific conference and 2) a specific topic being covered at the conference. This way other bloggers could then quickly find all posts that were made regarding a specific educational program at an event.

Even better, let's say that attendees at upcoming meeting are sharing their thoughts via their blogs about a program in which they will be participating. It would be helpful, if a person who was thinking about registering for the event could tap into this on-going, distributed conversation by being able to access this threat. If the topics were categorized in some logical manner, it would be much easier to find these threads. 

So I'm hoping to set-up some type of demonstration of this topic management system for a conference so that I and others can see how this might work.

Topics in RSS. Exploring topics in RSS2.0.

I've been doing some thinking about how to encode topic information into RSS2.0 feeds.  As a simple test of the Radio callback facility I have implemented a very simplistic protocol.  Within each <item> is a tag

<topic id="topic_id" type="topic-type" source="url">topic name</topic>

for each topic associated with the item (post).  A concrete example (using the rsstopics namespace):

<rsstopics:topic rsstopics:id="the_state" rsstopics:source="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/topicsT.html#the_state" rsstopics:type="generic">the state</rsstopics:topic>

Whilst this does have the advantage that it's simple and direct it's also a bit silly to invent a new format for topic information when we have two standard culprits available already:

• Resource Description Framework (RDF) 
• XML Topic Maps (XTM)

....

I have described approaches using RDF, XTM and a hybrid of the two.  Each has advantages and disadvantages although I believe the hybrid makes the best use of both formats.

I'd welcome comments and or opinions from interested parties.

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

I'll spare you all the details - but any interested parties - who'd like to help Matt bake topics into RSS - should check out this post and contact Matt.  This is REAL important stuff.

[Marc's Voice]

[Doug Fox -- The Future of Meetings]
9:56:49 AM    

Implementing Conference Trackback.

David Gammel recommends implementing a trackback mechanism in response to my earlier post in order to aggregate all weblog posts that relate to a specific session or event at a conference. I also included his post below. David also points to live illustration of trackback at a Mac conference.

David, thanks for your suggestion. I visited Mac conference trackback implementation. That's cool. Can this be done using any weblog publishing tool? Or can it only be done using Movable Type? Let's say that I post a comment about a session or event at this event, do I have to ping this trackback page or is there some other mechanism for capturing my conference-related post in another manner? And, how would I go about creating this type of trackback capability through my own weblog?

In terms of implementing an aggregation capability for weblog posts that relate to a specific conference or educational program, I was thinking of something broader:

Let's say that I'm producing an upcoming conference and tradeshow in six months. I could post each educational session as a separate weblog entry in my weblog. This way any interested participants or prospect could 1) subscribe to these feeds of session and updated session information, and 2) comment on any of the educational sessions before the program started.

This way, both the presenter/facilitator and likely attendees could be engaging in a rich, on-going conversation about a session before the program takes place instead of after the event is over. This type of interaction would enrich the quality of the educational experience because all participants would know what they wanted to learn and discuss before hand. It would also be beneficial for the conference organizer because they would be leveraging the distributed nature of the Internet to get the word out about their upcoming conference.

So, first, the educational sessions would be syndicated and, second, some type of trackback mechanism would be implemented so that the session descriptions and the comments about the sessions could be aggregated in a single location. Then, readers and contributors could subscribe to RSS feeds for specific educational tracks (with aggregated comments) or a specific session (with aggregated comments).

And for those sessions that generate a lot of conversation, the speaker and participants could add a polling capability, and, possibly, set-up a wiki a message board and other collaborative offerings.

Overall, I think this type of exchange could significantly enhance the quality of educational programs by 1) Giving participants a say in session design, focus and structure, 2) on a more dramatic level, ushering in a new educational model where sessions are designed from the bottom-up instead of the top-down.

Trackback for Live Events.

Doug Fox has been been tracking how bloggers have been interacting at live, f2f, meetings via their blogs. In this post he mentions:

Right now, there is no convenient way for presenters/attendees to reference educational sessions.

I think he is getting at the fact that there is no way with most meeting event web sites to find out who is blogging them live or immediately after the fact.

This sounds like a job for trackback. Attendees could ping individual sessions so that other attendees can see reaction and feedback in a central place. As a matter of fact, Ben and Mena Trott did exactly this for the Mac OS X Conference last year.

[High Context]

[Doug Fox -- The Future of Meetings]
9:55:46 AM    

A Syndication Solutioin for Conferences.

Joi Ito has created a RSS 2.0 feed that incorporates both comments to his posts and trackbacks.  This looks like a simple solution to what I've been thinking about creating for conferences and educational programs.

You can read Joi's RSS and RDF Fun post about his new RSS 2.0 feed.

Now, once I figure out what Joi has done, I can build RSS feeds for a sample conference:

- Each educational session or educational track is posted to its own category within a weblog.

- Each post can include comments and trackbacks.

- Then, anybody can subscribe to feeds for either for a category (educational track) or educational session.

That's it. Now we have a distributed conference discussion system that should get more people involved talking about an educational session or track well before the start of the conference. It will help everybody participate more actively and it will help people decide if they want to register in the first place.

There's still a number of things I have to figure out:

- How do you create a 2.0 feed

- How do you implement a trackback mechanism so that it is easy for users of different blog publishing tools to ping specific posts. I don't even know how to notify Joi's blog that I have written this post on my weblog.

Just to give you an idea of what Joi's RSS 2.0 feed looks like, here is a shortened version of his post, followed by comments and trackbacks:

RSS and RDF fun.

I have to admit that I've been feeling guilty about talking so much about RSS and RDF without REALLY understanding what I was talking about, a state which I think I fixed today. (While staring a pile of books on democracy and constitution law...) First I read Ben Hammersley's new O'Reilly Book Content Syndication with RSS. (great book with a description of the debate between Dave Winer and the RDF folks from the perspective of Ben Hammersley who was on the RDF side of the debate) I went and surfed around the Net reading the documentation on RSS and RDF on a variety of sites. Then I decided to try to do something interesting. I've created a new RSS 2.0 feed which includes the entry comments, links to the email or URL of authors of the comments, includes the number of comments in the guid's so that you get an update when someone posts a comment and permalinks in the feed to the comment as well as the item. I included the BlogChannel module so I could include my blogroll from Blogrolling.com. Thanks to Noel Jackson, I figured out how to include my Creative Commons License in my RSS feed.

The feed is here. Feedback would be appreciated.

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Comments (30)

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On April 6, 2003 07:41 PM Dave Winer said:

Very very interesting.

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Trackbacks (2)

Joi on RSS
Excerpt: Joi Ito likes my book is his experiments with RSS this weekend. His summary of the situation regarding the two
Weblog: Ben Hammersley.com
Tracked: April 6, 2003 08:46 PM

While we're on the topic... (RSS)
Excerpt: Joi Ito has gone and done it. He bought and read Ben Hammersley's new O'Reilly book "Content Syndication with RSS", Of course this means I have to run out and get it too (shame on me for not having it
Weblog: RowBoat
Tracked: April 7, 2003 09:16 AM

By Joichi Ito jito@neoteny.com. [Joi Ito's Web]

[Doug Fox -- The Future of Meetings]
9:54:31 AM    

Wi-Fi Pricing at Convention Centers.

I strongly encourage your to read Alan Reiter's post about Smart City Networks pricing structure for its Wi-Fi access at convention centers.  Excellent, in-depth coverage. Here is Glenn Fleishman's comment's about Alan's post:

Reiter Bites the Hand that Wires Convention Centers. Alan Reiter's typically deep analysis of a flawed approach by a former client to add connectivity at conference and exhibition centers: Smart City Networks debuts a clueless model of pricing that they will hear screams and howls of derision about, starting with their former consultant Alan Reiter. The company is pricing for a captive market at a rate that's probably very reasonable compared to what wired rates in convention centers cost: I've heard ridiculous stories of how many thousands of dollars per booth people pay for a few hundred Kbps of access. Alan cites rates that are different from the service agreement listed at the site he links to: Alan shows $5 per hour, $25 per day, and $650 for seven days. The site shows $10 per hour and $50 per day. All of these are clock/calendar times: it's an hour or a day from when you sign up, not an hour or day of usage overall. There are certainly daypricing models like that but very few hour-pricing ones. The cost is, of course, ridiculous, and people will rebel. I'd rather use a dial-up phone or spend $10 per day (or get a monthly account at $30 to $50) than pay $50 per day to have low-speed access all the time. This is the cell operators mistake, confusing ubiquity with utility. It has to be calculated as speed over cost times availability as a percentage: the faster the speed the less the absolute price matters and the multiplier is availability percentage or ubiquity percentage. Thus having 64 Kbps at a very low cost 95 percent of the time could be seen as good as 1 Mbps for a somewhat higher cost 5 percent of the time. But 64 Kbps at a very high cost just in a convention center will drive rejection, not adoption.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]

[Doug Fox -- The Future of Meetings]
9:48:45 AM