‘Here’s To Hello’ – Attending Conferences Because Of Attendee Lists

Sorry to all of the people I know who I recently spammed by sending out a link to that most recently-posted YouTube clip of Shakespeare, with the joke ‘dare you to do this at Dragon*Con!‘ I very much doubt anyone will (however, I would love to hear Dr Karen Stollznow recite Shakespeare, as she certainly would do justice to blank verse).

Apart from being a silly comment, it made me reflect upon how it was the SkepticTrack at Dragon*Con that I first thought of in regards to seeing all of them again. More recently I’ve reconnected and consolidated communication with a few overseas friends, with a mind to catch up later in the year. A conference seems to be the most sensible way to facilitate this – you have a large function in common, there’s activities and lectures to attend and the possibility of after-hours activities that you can opt in and out of.

I then realised that in recent email exchanges that it wasn’t so much ‘who’ was presenting that was uppermost in my mind, but who’d be seeing lectures with me. I’d say that the vast majority of people that I want to see at future events aren’t going to be on a stage or familiar to many beyond online social networking ‘code names’ or ‘aliases’, like ‘Digital Cuttlefish’ or ‘Naontiotami’.

Earlier in the year, Chrys of the Atheist Nexus wrote a fantastic recap of what it was like for her as an attendee at the Global Atheist Convention, mostly about the interaction with fellow members of the Sunshine Coast Atheists:

In a pub, I meet Gold, an intimidating six-foot plus New Zealander with a shaved head, pierced ear and huge gothic, silver buckled boots. Gold turns out to be a warm-hearted, good-natured but passionate atheist who’s literally spent his last cent to fly over for the Convention.  Despite being penniless, he offers to help us set up a website for our new atheist alliance.

Patrick and Grace from the Charlotte Atheists and Agnostics of North Carolina are here too — after meeting online they’re spending their honeymoon at the Convention. We adopt them as honorary Aussies.

I sit next to April for the Dawkins’ presentation. “I’ve just retired and I’ve got time to spare,” she says, “Tell me how I can get involved!”

This was also reflected in a blog-post I read recently about friends meeting up at a UK Skeptics in the Pub, where everyone knew each other by their blog-names or Twitter-names – Now charlatans will know to beware the geeks:

The “skeptic movement” (always spelt with “k” by the way, to emphasise their distinctiveness) had come to Singh’s aid. He was now in the protective custody of men and women, who, with straight faces, introduced themselves by the titles of their blogs: “Hi, I’m Gimpy.”

“Jack of Kent, pleased to meet you, love your writing. This is Holford Watch, Zeno, Jago, and I thought I saw the Quackometer getting a round in at the bar.”

Unnerved by their determination, I said to Ben Goldacre, demolisher of pseudo-science in all its fraudulent forms: “The nerds are on the march. I wouldn’t like to be the one standing in their way.” An uncharacteristically mystical look passed over the great debunker’s face. “Yes,” he said. “Strike us down, we shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

It was only later that I realised this is what Obi-Wan Kenobi says to Darth Vader in Star Wars and that the Skeptics movement’s highest cultural reference point was a 1970s’ B-movie. I shouldn’t have mocked. More to the point, neither should the English establishment.

It was Reed Esau (who continually surprises me with his reflections that always seem to be one step ahead of the main) who sent me the following link: Is Social The New Conference Black & Are Attendee Lists The New Allure?

I’ve recently read blogs, Facebook updates and tweets of colleagues that have waited until one to two weeks before a major event to register. (Interesting these people are posting their conference registration on their social network profiles.) I’ve even made the decision to attend some local events within the last week before that conference’s official start date.

Why? When I ask colleagues and friends why they wait until the last minute to register, I get a variety of answers and one seems to bubble to the top. “I waited because I wanted to see who else was attending.” When I dig further, I get this answer. “I wanted to see if any people from my online social networks were attending.”

Twitter has clearly changed things for us too – we use “hashtags” to track each other’s comments, to coordinate around the event we’re attending Is this something that is more magnified, rather than new? At the last Amazing Meeting I attended, there was a community white-board used to help people find each other and pass on messages, which I suspect will continue.

So, should events be more proactive with establishing Twitter hashtags (sometimes tough trying to figure out what’s the ‘official’ one!), message-boards on Facebook pages for events and recognising that there’s more to a convention than the appeal of the ‘big names’? I hope so – I’m certainly encouraging the likes of the Young Australian Skeptics to lead the way here, after they created the ‘Bloggers’ Breakfast’ at the GAC.

Tagged as: #atheistcon, atheism, conferences, conventions, Dragon*con, Facebook, GAC, Global Atheist Convention, Gold, hashtags, Links Elsewhere, New Zealand Skeptics, news, Religion, Science, Skepticism, social networking, twitter