Well, at least that’s what everyone seems to be calling it, along with #harshtag or #notjared, etc.  Right now, it seems to be circling with the world and no one seems to be able to make heads or tails of it.  So here is the story if you haven’t already heard it.

During this years HighEdWeb 2009 Conference there was a bit of a debacle with one of the keynote speakers. The speaker was David Galper.  Here is a quick run down of this keynote presentation:

College students are an interesting bunch. Everyone thinks they know what they want and the truth is no one knows not even the students. David will share his trials and tribulations building a school sanctioned legal digital entertainment service for college students. He will share how he has successfully reached and interacted with college students online. David will present a general understanding of what does and does not work with college students as well as specific recommendations for University sites. Bring your questions and fun ideas.

This sounded honestly, like a pretty good presentation.  I was curious to see what he had to say, as did many others.  Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out as well as we would have hoped.  Mr. Galper was once an enterprising entrepreneur who knew of a niche (the out of control download of music), and tried to exploit it.  He helped start a company called Ruckus, that helped curb illegal downloading on college campuses, but allowing students to download music legally.

At this time, this was a novel idea.  His ideas were definitely cutting edge back then.  Unfortunately, in today’s world, his ideas have already been considered mainstream.  None of this was news to those of us in the room.  In fact, most of the ideas he presented were in fact, out of date.  He made mentions of older programs like Kazaa and ICQ.  Programs that saw their limelight and have since faded into the interweb.  This caused quite a ruckus, no pun intended.  Read it yourself.  Now you can read lots of other opinions here, here, here, and here.  What I want to talk about is whether this is really as “uncommon” as many people think.

I honestly, think that we see this all the time.  I just don’t think that anyone has really thought about it before.  Most of the time though, we haven’t seen it.  Many of these back channels have been closed to us.  The advent of twitter has changed this.  Twitter gives everyone a place to post what we think, in real time.  I think this is something that has been coming for a really long time.  People flock to places where they can share ideas with like minded people.  Why do we think places like myspace or facebook have become so popular?  This kind of thing can be amazing.  However, it can also be a curse when things snowball.  So is this That’s the amazing thing about this instance…  unlike most flame wars, comments were completely one sided.  No one had anything good to say about the speaker.  No one defended him and at the time, no one questioned the etiquette of those making the posts.  What does that say?   That people inherently are snarky and sarcastic?   I don’t think so.  I think that it does say that the crowd can be a powerful thing, especially when they are completely united against something.  Will we see this more in the future?   You bet.  I do think that it will make presenters think twice about their audiences before they present to them.

Why?  I’d say that in the future, the presenter/audience dynamic will change.  No longer is the audience passively listening to a presentation.  In the future, they will be participants.  Which is amazing and scary at the same time. It will certainly make presentations better.  What does this mean for all of us?…

Social Media FTW!