Thats both a good thing (one more hour back in my busy schedule) and a bad thing (its nice having ready made content to serve up to the 2-3 people that read this blog). Dont worry though, it will be back next week -- we promise. Mainly geared toward physical events (hello conferences), Hot Potato allows attendees to overlay a virtual conversation -- which unlike Twitter, can be confined to a small group of friends or anyone at the conference. Ive had the pleasure of meeting Juli in person and listening to her speak at the 140 Conference in NYC last year. MORE >>

Everything will be done in the open, encouraging participation, contribution, and truthfulness and discouraging passive-aggressive behavior, back channel discussions, and hidden agendas. have begun advocating a shift in thinking about social media which considers it as one component of citizen/ public engagement From this perspective, social media is just one of the many different tools and channels where interaction can take place. Other channels include more traditional “Web 1.0″, Other channels include more traditional “Web 1.0″, MORE >>

We are particularly interested in the physical organization of attention and distraction as audience members at a lecture or conference interact with one another across multiple channels and sites. In the absence of strong conventions for shaping the conduct of these events, the presence of the network and multiple channels for interaction could, indeed, prove highly disorienting. For this reason, we have made a series of deliberate choices about how we incorporate technologies into this context and how we introduce these channels of communication to the participants. MORE >>

The Twitter back channel ( #defragcon ) went nearly silent as a roomful of bright people struggled to keep up with a firehose of big ideas. Lunch with speakers, drinks with people who don't always have time to hang around at other conferences, and a crowd that can mix social trends, technology, math, science, politics, and whatever else they think of. Yeah, I'll be back. I mentioned earlier that I would again make the trip to Colorado for Defrag. If, in the future, you want me to come to your event, make sure it doesn't compete with Defrag. MORE >>

Do you think this whole social TV, whether it’s American Idol or Super Bowl or what have you, this back channel, we’re watching it with one eye, we’re tweeting it with the other eye, is that ultimately a good thing? We used to sit around television sets with families, or farther back sit around the radio and watch the radio back in the ’40s and ’50s before there was television, and it was a shared experience. Eric: Conferences are the same thing. When you’re on the stage at a conference, you have to. Listen Now. MORE >>