PBwiki Presenter Advice

Krissy and Ramit, I have now reposted it here in Get satisfaction. This version is slightly edited and updated.

I frequently do presentations for a wide range of audiences, including businesses, educators, volunteers, students, politicians, and beyond. In 2006 I started to experiment by setting up a wiki (all based on PBwiki) before some of my gigs. Unfortunately all those experiments are in Swedish, links below. but if you dare take a look you might be inspired (or scared :-).

My favorite is the "Webbdagarna wiki" http://webbdagarna.pbwiki.com, integrated with my key note presentaton for a conference arranged by the magazine Internetworld (leading one in Sweden, published by IDG). It was held October 24,2007 and although it was updated during and directly after the event, it has remained pretty intact since. With the exception for some of the integrated RSS feeds, which monitors keywords related to the conference. My idea was to allow the conference participants to interact with me and the rest of the audience through the wiki. We also fixed a couple of other backchannels using Jaiku and Onelinr. Feeds from the Jaiku channel, Onelinr, and knuff.se (kind of technorati like service) where mashed together using pipes.yahoo.com and integrated on the wiki’s "Recent Activity" (the Jaiku feed went to QuickStart and Onelinr to SideBar). Those of you that like to play with PBwiki widgets might want to hack (take apart to understand - not destroy) how I did it.

As an introduction to my key note gig I demonstrated the wiki, and the three open questions I had put on its Firstpage. Towards the end of my presentation I came back to the wiki and discussed IRL with the audience what we saw. Later, during a plenary discussion before lunch, we checked back into the wiki. All three questions had been answered in the wiki (not by me) after my gig! We could also see that people had used the other backchannels (including text messaging) to share their responses with the world. Knuff had also picked up some of the comments from live bloggers (and non-attendees as well).

Even though I had high expectations, it went pretty well on the technical side. Main problem for me was that I did not have much time for the gig (45 minutes), and that the audience new nothing beforehand. Next time I will make sure to have the wiki projected on a separate screen (I had to switch between my presentation slides and the wiki).

Main lessons learned from http://webbdagarna.pbwiki.com:
- It worked, was useful, and can be improved (of course :-)
- If possible, project the wiki on a separate screen (tough for presenter :-)
- Make sure the rooms Internet connectivity works (Wifi stopped 2 times)
- Tell the audience beforehand (if that is appropriate)
- It is on the web, so non-attendants will join
- Things happen on the wiki after the meeting too
- All this was low budget

Some other of my other gig-related wikis (although not so savvy as the one above) are:
http://sfispodcastkurs.pbwiki.com (workshop about podcasting)
http://ibceuroforum.pbwiki.com (conference presentation about wikis)
http://berghsmyopia.pbwiki.com (web 2.0 presentation for students)
http://dmdd.pbwiki.com (support for my moderation)

I used the last one (dmdd) as a tool to prepare for a conference I was contracted to moderate. Before the Day I invited all speakers to present themselves and their subject in the wiki, then "private". At the conference morning I opened up the wiki to the "public" (nothing much have happened on it since then).

I would love your comments and questions, but please take a look at the wikis first to make sure we have an idea about what we are discussing.

Finally, special thanks to all the developers of PBwiki. Without you nothing of the above would have been possible.