Tech For Free!

In a prior posting “Capturing the Backchannel From Non-Techies,” I described how I was able to capture the backchannel of an early childhood event that consisted of a less than tech savvy crowd. In short, I assembled a team of volunteer iReporters who were responsible for sharing their personal aha moments and learnings, while also reporting on what happened within sessions and other group discussions. This endeavor was successful for a number of reasons, but one of the main reasons was that the technical barriers for participants were kept low.

Keeping Barriers Low

• To keep barriers low, I created a single website that displayed postings made by iReporters to other social media services like Twitter. Displaying all postings, whether it be a “Tweet” or a photo through a single site, was important because it meant readers wouldn’t need to navigate to/through multiple websites.

• Readers were NOT required to enter login credentials to read anything on the site—even if the content was pulled from a social service.

• I eliminated the registration process for iReporters (required for reporting through the site) by creating user accounts for them that included their photos. The inclusion of photos made the site feel more friendly (see screen shot below).

• While iReporters could report using a social media service of their choice, they could also report directly through the website. The website was created with WordPress using the P2 Theme. WordPRess P2 was selected because it provided a user friendly format for an author to make a posting through the site. The theme was also selected because it was clean and minimalistic.

• Prior to the event, I met with each iReporter to ensure they understood how they would be reporting. Reporting assignments were mutually agreed upon and based upon survey assessment results. Regardless of how an iReporter had chosen to report, all iReporters received an overview of how the website worked so that if they had a problem with their own services they could report directly through the website.

• An internet cafe was made available at the event. This allowed iReporters that did not have their own technology an easy way to report. Additionally, the availability of the internet cafe allowed participants who were not tracking the backchannel using their own technology could read what was happening in the moment(each computer had the browser homepage set to the homepage of the website).

• Because iReporters were also participants of the event, I chose to be responsible for downloading, editing, and uploading video/photo, which can be a time consuming and technically challenging process. iReporters dropped off their cameras and would return a couple hours later, or the next day to pick up their equipment and repeat the process. Flip Video cameras were checked out to iReporters assigned as videographers.