The world is changing rapidly - everything that can and cannot go online. Conferences are no exception. Recently I had the experience of participating in the KnowledgeConf 2020 Online and even being part of the excellent ONTIKO team.
It's worth starting from afar. I submitted my report back in January - the topic of liberating structures, which I got to know for a long time, came to me very strongly, and in Warsaw I took part in a master class on techniques from liberating structures.
Time passed and I did not even think about quarantine - I talked with PC member Svetlana Novikova about my report and we gradually came to something more or less structural, when suddenly unpleasant events began all over the world, which led us to the fact that the organizers I had to move the conference online.
We met with the KnowledgeConf team at the conference booth at TeamleadConf2020.
Host of the second hall on the first day
As I said at the very beginning - at this conference I was not only in the role of a speaker - I was also the host on the first day of the event in the second hall. I really like the ontico approach. I had a good microphone, but there was no normal light and camera - after a couple of days I had a camera and light. And a couple of days later they also brought the background! Respect for such speed and commitment to quality!
Technically how was it
With such a background, light and a camera, it is a pleasure to conduct the event 🙂 We managed to achieve a beautiful picture, but the backend of my event management was less attractive 🙂
Wires under the shirt, meters of scotch tape and a collective farm light fixture - which you won't go for the sake of sharing knowledge 🙂 For the organizers, I had a choice of 3 microphones - I settled on a buttonhole, which I use as a mobile or spare.
Organizationally, being in a leading way - in my right ear I have an earpiece with the sound of the broadcast - through it I listen to the guest and announcements. In the left earpiece, I have a discord with the director - the readiness of the speakers, questions and, in general, the plot of the conference were transmitted to me through the discord.
The scheme is quite convenient and reliable - I put it aside in my head for my interviews.
Interesting life hacks
In general, I speak quite quickly. Speech rate - 80% of my feedback after any performances. I am working on it and gradually getting my results. But here was a completely new experience for me - I was the host for the first time and I was sure that the speed of speech would soar up to sky 🙂
So I decided to find solutions for gradually delivering text right in front of my eyes - like a TV news anchor. Online service teleprompt.online helped me with this. It looks something like this:
- I'm preparing all the lyrics for the next broadcast.
- I load it into the teleprompt.online program
- I display this text neatly inside the lamp (photo will be below)
- I read the text and look directly almost, almost into the camera
- It turns out pretty good 🙂
Of course, live dialogues are very important and I didn’t prescribe them in advance) I wrote texts only for speaker lines and final words after the speakers' speeches in order to "get into the stream" after the break - then everything is built calmly in the form of an ordinary live dialogue.
The life hack turned out to be useful and I also used it on the announcement of speakers on RndTechOnlinePub on May 23 - you can see how it looks on the air 🙂 This approach is a very cool way to adjust the speed of speech - I have some regular difficulties with this, but here I won't be able to speak faster than the text runs. In general, I recommend 🙂
The last link problem
That's why it is online, to depend on the quality of the Internet. The organizers of the conference really did everything possible to get the highest quality result. But, alas, the speaker did not manage to influence the quality of communication.
We had some technical problems during the interview - I interviewed Svetlana Novikova, an activist in the Write The Docs Russia community and author of a Telegram channel about knowledge management. The interview itself was successful, but with 3 attempts - the costs of the online format 🙂
There was also an incident during my speech - at the end of the report, the lights in my office, from where I was broadcasting online, were turned off 🙂 The light appeared quite quickly - UPS did an excellent job. And the mobile Internet did not disappoint - there were no freezes for the viewers on my part.
Второй день и мой доклад
The second day was much easier for me - I was no longer the host. It began with a panel discussion with some speakers and the head of the program committee, Rodion Nagornov. We talked about knowledge management and shared our experience and launched the second day of the conference.
My report was at 13.45. This time I was a less professional speaker and sent the final version of the presentation only at 13.20 - it was in time and well. The time came for my presentation and I was announced by Roman Poborchiy (I was a guest in the 8th edition of MoreView) and I started speaking.
I will repeat once again - I really enjoy performing online. This has its own catch. And I understand the obvious disadvantages of being online 🙂 But with the experience of streaming MoreView and a couple of online speeches, I realized that I was not at all nervous when telling material to my laptop. I have never been able to achieve such "enlightenment" offline!) I am sure that after so many online performances it will be even easier for me to speak offline.
Так что, если вы вдруг хотите начать выступать, но боитесь - начинайте сейчас, пока все происходит онлайн и можно выступать хоть каждый день в любой точке нашего земного шара. Текущая реальность забирает у нас много возможностей, но также размывает границы - заходите на список конференций ОНТИКО, выбирайте подходящую конференцию, придумайте великолепный доклад и подавайте.
A few words about my report
My talk reads like this - "Sharing of knowledge through liberating structures". If the phrase "knowledge sharing" is a fairly understandable phrase, then "liberating structures" are not immediately clear to everyone. In short, this is a set of interaction practices in a team, where everyone participates on equal terms.
Moreover, there is no hierarchy or bosses in them. With this set of 33 practices, you can fumble knowledge across teams of all sizes.
В своем докладе я разобрал несоклько примеров из нашей практики:
- 1. 1-2-4-all. The simplest structure to understand and implement
- 8. Troika Consulting. For pinpoint identification of problems and their direct solution.
- 12. Crowd 25/10. To highlight ideas for solving the current problem
On the day of my report, Maxim Tsepkov wrote a review on it - you can read it here.
Conclusion
Конечно онлайн не сможет сменить нам оффлайн. Но всегда можно найти как получить максимум результата из любой ситуации. Я рад, что организаторы делают мероприятия в онлайне и с каждым разом все лучше и лучше! Еще больше я рад тому, что я мог быть частью этого процесса и побыть ведущим конференции.
Very soon there will be a RIT ++ festival, where I will also be the host from 3 to 5 days 🙂
