I was prepping a post on the EU Commission's lethargic adoption of online conferencing but decided against it because of the snark. Then I see @TonyLbxl ask whether online conferences can deliver the same value as physical events... https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tonylbxl_amid-coronavirus-fears-startups-rethink-activity-6649564216187502592-o0hO

...so, given that @roamresearch is still working on making individual nodes public, here are my post-notes in thread form. Be warned: this is a @Ifuckingtoldyouso candidate ;)

#covid19 has #cancelledconferences worldwide - a huge deal in Brussels, where dozens of conferences and workshops are held every month, many organised by the Commission & other EU Institutions.

These events happen for a reason: to exchange knowledge, build networks to further exchange knowledge post-event, etc. Attendees also seek visibility, policy traction and - let's be frank - dates ;)

Right now their organisers are scrambling to find online options for replacing those face2face exchanges. They're discovering that solutions exist... but they take time to set up. Often too much time

But these solutions were *pioneered* by the Commission in 2002. If they'd been mainstreamed in the 18 years since, the pandemic's impact on Brussels business would be far lower today. And millions of flight-kilometres saved.

There was no social media or YouTube back then, and livestreaming was unwatchable. But we built a Web2.0 site 2 years before the term Web2.0 was invented, and it worked.

Here's how:

The "IST 2002" event was a 3-day programme of conference workshops, networking sessions and an exhibition, aimed at participants in EU-supported ICT research & related policymaking. It was held in October 2002...

... but the site was launched in early February, so users could save the date, register and subscribe to its enewsletter. Nothing more. A few weeks later, enewsletter 1 arrived, launching Phase 1.

Phase 1: two Calls opened. To answer either, users first submitted a Personal Profile: who they were, where they worked, interests, etc. These were checked for trolls and splog by an intern, who deleted precisely none.

One Call was for Conference workshops. Submitted proposals were checked, the worst ones weeded out and the rest published as *provisional*, all on a rolling basis.

The other Call was for Exhibits. There was nothing interactive about it until the summer, when winners provided data on space, bandwidth & other requirements via back-office forms, for import into logistics systems.

Phase 2 launched when those Calls closed. By then there were 6x more provisional workshop proposals than available slots. Why?

Because in Phase 2, all site members could comment.

So what?

Because the jury used the *interest* a proposal got to help decide if it earnt a slot in the final Conference Programme.

So what do you think the proposers did? They Told Their Friends!

After all, getting a workshop slot meant higher visibility, translating directly into better chances of funding and/or policy traction, depending on your interests.

With each proposer now a multiplier, larger numbers of people registered, created personal profiles and commented. True #Participation = amazing #Communication.

The resulting conversations fleshed out the workshop proposals: commenters didn't just 'Like' them, they suggested ideas for the workshop to cover & asked for a chance to take the mike. This was *their* chance at higher visibility, too.

With each comment linking to the commenter's Profile, each workshop proposal became a mini-community of interest.
Community management (public & backchannel) merged similar workshops, widening communities further.

Phase 3: Using the comments as a signal, the jury publish the Final Conference programme (& Exhibition), delighting some, disappointing many.
The conversations continued as...

Phase 4: the Call for Networking Session Proposals launches. As before, proposals were vetted, published as provisional and discussed online, with more popular proposals chosen for the final Networking Programme.

Those whose conference proposals did not make the Final Conference Programme found it easy to put together a Networking Session proposal, as they already had a community to work with.

Every year we invited the previous year to get involved, and gave them 'one click' import of their previous year's Personal Profile. Every year, unsurprisingly, the online community grew.

For ICT 2006, the last I was involved in, we had 8000 comments to provisional networking sessions in one month.
That month was August.

Some Results:
Conferences better matching attendees' interests.
Relationships started online & reinforced face2face.
Better face2face networking & knowledge flows.
A thriving online community where knowledge flows 24/7/365.
Better comms.

Some learnings, implemented over next years:
a) while the networking programme stayed 100% bottom-up, most conference programme became 'mixed': some sessions defined by organisers, others by the community

b) We began explicitly telling the community which topics we favoured to steer the conference programme onto high-priority areas

c) Giving Users a "contact me" feature on their Public Profile, allowing other users to message them without publishing their email address... as long as the other user had also activated the same feature.

d) Allowing users to reserve 'networking coffee tables' and invite their new (or old) friends to meetup for an hour. These tables were scattered throughout the venue - the best spots were in the exhibition.

(A 2003 analysis showed that a well-designed exhibition was a better networking platform than the actual networking programme, so from 2004 we located networking session rooms and coffee tables in the Exhibition Zone).

The Commission department that pioneered this put the code on an internal EC-wide code library in 2003, and is still doing this today. But noone else is.

If you'd told me back in 2003 that this approach was *not* going to be mainstream by 2010 I'd have accused you of being too negative and cynical. But it's 2020, and it still isn't.

If it had been, how would things in Brussels look like today?

a) All EC departments would have permanent online communities of people who had participated in one of their events. Each event would add new people to that community.

b) All participants could participate at any event, organised by any Department, with a click, using either portable or multi-site Profiles. Sharing your participation with friends: another click.

c) Everyone would be totally comfortable with preparing for events online so that super-valuable face2face time would be spent optimally.

d) Every event website would be incredibly enriched with user content. Which the users would share socially, widening visibility massively.

e) Event websites - with integrated videoconferencing - give non-attendees 50-80% of the benefits with 0% of the travel costs, widening #participation in EC conversations from people outside the Brussels Bubble.

The pandemic would not be 'business as usual'. But it would not have stopped business entirely.

.../end

PS Some more reading:
52 resources I #LikeThinkDo tagged #participation: https://myhub.ai/@mathewlowry/?tags=participation

148 tagged #community: https://myhub.ai/@mathewlowry/?quality=all&tags=community&timeframe=anytime&types=like&types=do&types=think

And 11 tagged both: https://myhub.ai/@mathewlowry/?tags=community&types=like&types=do&types=think&timeframe=anytime&quality=all&tags=participation