Presenting skills is a big problem for most people I think, particularly when it is not something they on a regular basis. (That some of these poor librarian presenters are also doing instruction sessions is worrisome.) It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past year, as I’ve ended up doing more and more presentations. (Maybe that’s another post.)

To echo many of the voices that have commented here, I am also wary of the use of Second Life. Like Erin, I had always heard it touted as a place to provide reference and other library services, which I feel is as waste of time, unhelpful to patrons, etc etc. However, when I read your post I thought, why has all the hype been about the patrons? Why can’t it be about us?

I agree that seminars hosted on the web are terrible. (I absolutely HATE the word, webinars.) At least most that I have attended are BORING, not because of their content, but because the format of these online presentations simply mimic the presentation format of a slide show at a conference. We, librarians of the world, instructors and teachers of the public and of the student, are terrible presenters. Take a terrible presenter to an online seminar forum and things just get worse.

This is something that I have noticed at MLA, ALA, and various other conferences. What is it going to take to get presentations to step away from the 4 person panel format wherein participants don’t really participate? They are rather just passive actors on a stage. In general, we need to come up with ways for more pro-active presentation and conference formats. You pointing to that tangible part of interaction in Second Life might be a stepping stone to our re-thinking of conference presentations and participation.

Thanks for making me think about this one! I don’t hate the mention of Second Life in libraries anymore.

After you (in most cases) pay a registration fee and travel there. I don’t want this to be an either/or. There are always advantages and drawbacks.

“What I’m trying to say is that if you gave that same presentation to a room full of people using as few bells and whistles as possible, you are likely to communicate well with a wider audience.”

True, but they would have to be a local audience, that is people near me in space. Which costs money and time.

That’s the whole point of my post, alternatives.

As far as the “inclusive” thing is concerned, this is why I support things like RFID, mobile phone projects, QR codes, sensors, and really anything that is about dispersing information technologies in our real world environment and linking to a virtual environment. Not that there aren’t issues with this as well, but ubiquitous or peravsive computing of that nature is “inclusive”. In a conference setting, presentation software, the public address system, the very architecture you sit in is “inclusive”.

In an immersed environment, it is all “exclusive”. When the day comes that SL offers an overlay of info during a conference in my real life through an earpiece and eyepiece (which is sort of creepy), then it is “inclusive”.

I suspect there might be some disagreement, but I wanted to put it out there… tell me why I’m wrong… help me refine my opinions…

All I’m really getting at is that virtual worlds like SL remain exclusive rather than inclusive, and ‘meatspace’ conferences are still better at feeling inclusive. My real, physical being as opposed to an avatar remains a better interface for information sharing. By “elite” I was getting at “exclusive”. I can stumble into a conference, but I can’t stumble into SL.

Re: familiarity with topics for presentations- well, with the Blackboard example, no you can’t expect everyone to be familiar with the topic, no. True. What I’m trying to say is that if you gave that same presentation to a room full of people using as few bells and whistles as possible, you are likely to communicate well with a wider audience. Now perhaps a wide audience is not what you want- perhaps a specialized audience congregates on SL that is appropriate for this discussion. More power to you then- good decision to do it there.

Maybe I flew off the handle with my comment. I’m really not a luddite at all, but I fail to see how a SL conference can compare to a real conference. If webinars are transitional, SL is most certainly transitional as well. No?

Nate: “your presentation can only reach a very particular elite audience, an audience that I suspect might agree with or even already know a lot of whatever you plan on presenting”

I don’t follow the logic. While users of Second Life do require some amount of technology, they are not necessarily “elite.” And your argument that everyone would “agree” is illogical. If I do a presentation in Second Life about integrating library resources into Blackboard, what is there to agree with and why would the audience necessarily already know about my topic? Are all Second Life users automatically well versed in everything? Is there no potential for new users to come to the presentation?

I can see how you might get to your point, the majority of library related SL presentations I’ve heard about were about SL itself, which might lead to the situation you mention (and is the only way I can see your Obama example being analogous). My point is it doesn’t have to be that way. You could talk about anything (the presentation I mention in my post was on comics).

I’m not sure what the “least common denominator” would be. Talking to everyone in person? Writing? Sure, all those are great. I’m offering some thoughts on alternatives. I’m not sure any format would necessarily be inclusive for everyone. That’s why we should be trying different options and formats.

I’m not really into Second Life myself, and I certainly don’t hate on it or want to judge it, so don’t misunderstand me. I do think its important to consider your audience when using any media for communication, especially if you are trying to educate or sway opinion. If I had a particular library-related topic or initiative that I wanted to promote and truly communicate with a group, I try to use a ‘least-common-denominator’ approach when choosing my medium for knowledge transfer. I know you aren’t posting an argument that Second Life conferences should replace First Life conferences. But make no mistake- a Second Life conference is audience exclusive, not audience inclusive- regardless of the price of gas and travel.

“While this model [webinars] can be effective for conveying information, it is not any more effective than just posting the presentation prerecorded and is severely lacking in any social aspect. Other attendees are names on a list and perhaps an occasional chat comment. Webinars are also visually dull (especially if the presenter is not skilled in slide design) and offer little interaction for the audience.”

I can defitely agree that some webinars I’ve attended can be a snoozefest with a speaker droning on over bullet points. But the responsibility for creating a participative webinar depends on the organizers, speakers and attendees. We’ve done tons of webcasts at the blended librarians online learning community (http://blendedlibrarian.org). We’ve had some clunkers but we learn from the experience and work hard to make them interesting. First, we make every presenter go through a practice session and we coach them on how to present in the elluminate platform, what works visually and what doesn’t (not all listen well), how to integrate techniques to keep participants involved (polls, web tours,etc) and how to use the tools to make the session more interactive. This helps to an extent. Many first time webinar presenters are nervous and want to keep things simple. We encourage and support them as needed. We also try to keep a lively chat going with the use of a “model citizen” – that’s someone who works the chat room to get attendees engaged in the discussion. This works pretty well to keep chat on target and get people asking questions. Attendees can be more than a name on a list – we see this at all of our webcasts – folks who know each other, regular attendees, etc. You will see them interacting in the chat. Finally, we’ve found that the vast majority of librarians who attend our webcasts do not use a headset. Without that you can’t take advantage of the VoIP features. Why won’t librarians invest $20 in a decent headset they’ll use regularly? When you have attendees with headsets all of sudden you’ve got real conversations going on. It makes a huge difference. So if a webinar is dull, it may be because the attendees won’t get involved despite our efforts to encourage (then again the vast majority of librarians who attend F2F presentations won’t say a word). Webinars have their drawbacks, but I know the folks who attend our BL webinars truly appreciate them because for many librarians connecting to a webinar is the only opportunity they have for professional development. I would argue, that done right – with some advance planning, thinking about how to get the attendees activated, and a involved group of participants – a webcast can be far more dynamic than a prerecorded presentation.

has lead me to OpenSimulator http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page which appears to be an emerging open source SL alternative.