ICCMSN2008 the rest

ICCMSN2008 is now well and truly over and I'm home from a week on the go in New Zealand. Three of those days was at the conference. The remainder gave me a chance to take a look at Invercargill and surrounds and some of the sites of Dunedin. I am amazed at how many photos a person can take with a 2Gb SD card and digital camera in just a few days.

I've blogged about Day 1 separately but will wrap up the remainder in a single post. Michael has already, very diligently, written a report. I'm tempted to just pull out a few highlights.

The conference dinner was excellent, if somewhat remote from the conference venue. Many of the attendees piled into a coach at 4.00pm on the second day and were bussed off to Moeraki (of the famed boulders - which we didn't see as they were further up the road and it was almost dark) where we enjoyed the food and wine at Fleur's place.

Sunset at Moeraki

Fleur's Place

It was informal and a great chance to do some unmediated social networking. Likewise the morning and afternoon tea breaks were very social and not technologically enhanced.

Tea Break at the Otago Museum

The conference was held in the Otago Museum's Barclay Theatre, which proved to be a fine, intimate venue for the 75ish delegates. Everyone shared the same papers as there were no parallel sessions. The venue also had wifi, which was well employed as we twitterred, blogged and took notes throughout. The twitter input was projected onto the wall so all could see, even if they were not connected.

A conference page has been set up at IRGO and it is hoped that most of the conference material and links will be accessible from there. Most of the sessions were also recorded (audio at least) using an ipod and belkin microphone, so if the quality is OK, we can look forward to that becoming available as well.

Here are some unattributed quotes and notes from various presentations that caught my attention:

• Bandwidth is huge in face to face interactions
• We are still seduced by the technology - something that could be resolved in 2 minutes might take 2 hours online
• Elements of personalization to traditional storytelling by use of twitter, email etc changes the dynamic of the story
• Female students tended to use a wider variety of media for contacting their friends/family. Women tended to have more female contacts in their mobile phone address books, men had a more even gender balance in their contacts. Women had more family members than men had in their contacts list.
• Where do expectations come from? How to make it easy for people to specify expectations for social software development. "good lord! how to avoid meeting and talking to a customer about their requirements for software"
• People are like ants - we just do our bit.
• Side effects of technology - tech introduced for a reason, but there are unexpected side effects. Sometimes quirky, but sometimes harmful.
• Impact of hi def tv - will people want similar resolution in Second Life?
• Tag team presenting can be curiously engaging!
• What is embedded knowledge? - knowledge that is sticky, integrated with other knowledge
• Only 20% of young people trust their service providers. Low level of trust
• Relationships with companies are more successful if the company gives something first. Culture of sharing, we want to give and that builds trust.
• Lone learners are often pressed for time and are happy about this. But most want to work with others and collaborate. Peers also learn from the experience.
• The term web2.0 is a handicap when trying to explain it to the education sector. Use term about social media, socially constructed media.