Simon’s Blog

 

Today, I wanted to blog a few thoughts about the “backchannel”. Now, while many of the readers of this blog will already know what the backchannel is, I suspect that many won’t; so first, a little explanation.   I’ll quote from Wikipedia, because it has a good, concise explanation:

Backchannel is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks… The term “backchannel” generally refers to online conversation about the topic or the speaker. Occasionally backchannel provides audience members a chance to fact-check the presentation.

In other words, while the talk is going on, the audience is chatting amongst themselves on-line. If you think about what that means in practice, then you’ll realise that it’s a big change compared with how public speaking has worked historically, and fraught with difficulties.   Why?  Because, historically, when a speaker is giving a talk, the audience listens; and then, afterwards there’s usually time for some discussion with the audience in the form of a Q&A.   With the backchannel, the audience is effectively “talking over” the speaker, and “talking over” the Q&A discussion.

Let’s take a specific example.   Yesterday, Jason Calanis, invited anyone that can watch streaming video  to join the folks at his Los Angeles-based start-up company, Mahalo,  to watch their lunch-time guest, Andrew Keen,  give a talk.   That was a great thing to do, by the way, and it showed Mahalo in a pretty good light.   The company looks like a start-up that’s being run well e.g. they don’t have fancy offices - if you put people in expensive offices, they tend to think they’re a success (which is not the right mindset for people working at start-ups to have).  Also they’ve clearly hired some intelligent folks: there some really tough, thoughtful questioning of the speaker during the Q&A.

During the talk, Mahalo projected the backchannel onto screens inside the company.  Or rather, that’s how it was at the start.  However, Calacanis switched it off after a while, because he didn’t like the conversation that was taking place there.  The backchannel conversation was highly critical of Andrew Keen’s talk. No-one in the chatroom seemed particularly impressed by his arguments; and people made some insightful criticisms during the talk.  The power of these arguments, however, was reduced because there was also a fair amount of noise, in the form of people simply being rude about the speaker.

Was the backchannel a good thing, or a bad thing here?  I think it’s a bit of both. On the one hand, the backchannel gatekeeper, Jason Calacanis, decided that the backchannel was a net negative in terms of being a truly integral part of the lunchtime discussion.    However, the audience in the chatroom disagreed with much of what the speaker was saying, and made some useful points that could have added value to the discussion inside the company.

This example is, I think, typical of the way backchannels work today. There are significant positive and  significant negative aspects, and the negative aspects come to the fore especially when they’re projected so that everyone can see them. The challenge for proponents of the backchannel is to find a way to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Right now, it’s fair to say that the backchannel can often be a distraction to the discussion. That turns a lot of people off, and means that much of its potential value is not being realised.