Many factors drive turnout at a large event like "The Amazing Meeting 8" (TAM8) but this year one emerging driver in particular merits our rapt attention. That driver is social media. It not only has been changing how we interact, but it has been fueling a renaissance in conferencing among skeptics.
Social media can be used to promote events. The buzz surrounding Richard Dawkins and others in the speaker lineup has likely led many to register to attend. At the same time, many of us are attracted to TAM8 not so much to see the likes of Dawkins, but rather to meet and socialize with friends and acquaintances from our growing social media networks. In short, networking is gaining currency among skeptics in a big way and TAM is one of the beneficiaries.
Until only recently, one might expect that skepticism would be entering a "post-conference" era, one in which "virtual" events cannibalize and supplant those which are live and in-person. The time and cost of travel, the growing sophistication of social media tools, and the wide availability of streaming video would appear to justify the decline of conferences, including TAM.
But that's not happening. To the contrary, skepticism is experiencing the proliferation and growth of live, in-person events, not only our largest ones like TAM and Skeptrack at Dragon*Con, but regional events like NECSS and SkeptiCal, local events like Skeptics in the Pub and those that buck convention like Skepchicamp, one of the many SkeptiCamp open events.*
The tools of social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.) are playing a role in this resurgence in conferencing, but how exactly? As mentioned earlier, promotion is an obvious role—the buzz of excitement surrounding events can fuel participation. But social media is more than promotion. It is about interacting in small and large ways with others, including close friends as well as acquaintances you've never met. That daily interaction can drive a desire for human contact—a desire to have a beer with your tweeps, for example. However, that's where social media hits a wall. Having a beer at Virtual Drinking Skeptically can have value, but it is a different experience than sharing a beer in the Del Mar Lounge at TAM. The tools cannot convey a richness of human communication that is only possible through live, in-person social interaction.
When we are in the same room, we communicate not merely through our words, but also through an array of non-verbal messages: eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice and subtle body language. Together these provide a real-time exchange of information that can often convey much more than words alone. Even the most intimate of online tools (video chat, e.g.) can only approximate this level of interaction. So where a craving for deeper interaction has been instilled, it would appear to provide an allure to attend conferences:
"What live events [...] allow us to do is transfer those intangible relationships we've developed online into the physical forms of friendship that we've come to expect and understand from our pre-web days. Suddenly emoticons are replaced with actual smiles and sneers, body language and inflection supply the missing context from our tweets, and human beings prove themselves to be more than a collection of blog posts and Flickr tags." Justin Kownacki One Inarguable Benefit of Live Social Media Events (2009)
That physical contact only needs to be renewed periodically to enrich more primitive forms of interaction:
"there's no substitution for face-to-face... so anything you can do to try to interact with people IN PERSON is critical. Even if it's just a once a year meeting, the very fact that you've had a chance to see and hear that person and experience them in front of you goes a long way toward helping [when you] return to text." Kathy Sierra Why Face to Face Still Matters (2006)
If in-person events are emerging as a powerful glue of social media, how can we build upon this development?
Merely hosting additional conferences isn't sufficient if they are ill-suited to social interaction. Your Twitter-using attendees may remain isolated from one another if there's no wireless connectivity or time in the schedule to interact or comfortable space in which to talk. Your event must at least allow interaction, even if it's not designed around it.
There is much you can do as a conference attendee to build upon social media. Seek out and connect with your fellow attendees. Promote your participation, such as by adding your name to the public page for the event. (Those TAM-bound in July, be sure to add your name to the TAM8 Event Page on Facebook.) This actually drives turnout, as many potential attendees will be drawn to the prospect of meeting up with their friends and those whom they wish to meet.
To improve your chances of being recognized from across the room, consider using an avatar picture on Facebook/Twitter that is your actual face. Writing your @twitter name prominently on your badge allows others to easily follow you. All posted tweets and pictures should use the designated event tag (#TAM8) so others can find fellow attendees through search.
In-person events have always provided a deep level of social interaction. You can attend a conference like TAM without ever having heard of Twitter or Facebook and will likely have a great time. However, conferences are social events that benefit from tools that can tear down the barriers between attendees. The attendees in turn can benefit from the interaction possible at events that can transform mere online acquaintances into friendships that can persist long after one's memories of the keynote speaker have faded.
If you will be at TAM8, join me for a beer in the Del Mar Lounge.
You can follow Reed on the Twitter at @reedes and @skepticamp. He's also on Facebook at http://facebook.com/reede and blogs occasionally at http://esau.org.
* (Full disclosure: I'm the principle advocate of the community-organized open event model called "SkeptiCamp" that is gaining a toehold at the local/regional level.)