Someone raised an excellent question yesterday about ways for participants to interact during the CMEpalooza presentations. This is a good point since one of the weaknesses of a virtual conference is the lack of face-to-face interaction. In an effort to offset that loss of in-person communication, below are a few suggestions for interacting both with faculty and other participants of CMEpalooza.

3 Ways to Ask Presenters Questions 

1. By utilizing the Google+ Hangout Q&A  app that will be active during each presentation. It’s my preferred way for participants to ask questions since it’s the eaisiest for me to monitor. Below is a quick tutorial I put together on how to watch the presentations on the CMEpalooza website and ask questions using the Q&A app. The caveat here is that you need to have a Google+ account in order to ask questions this way (ignore what I say in the video about needing to only have a gmail account to use the Q&A app. I was wrong. You need a Google+ account.)
2. Send me a tweet (@theCMEguy) with your question and the #CMEpalooza hashtag. I’ll ask your question verbally to the presenter
3. Submit your question in the comment box on the CMEpalooza website. The question will not appear on the website but will be immediately emailed to me. I’ll ask your question verbally.

Interacting With Other Participants

For those interested in interacting with other participants during CMEpalooza, the best suggestion I can offer is to take to Twitter using the #CMEpalooza hashtag. The Twitter backchannel is a great way to recreate those hallway conversations we all find so valuable at live meetings. I frequently engage in twitter conversations with fellow participants during both live and virtual events and really have found them to be an invaluable resource. If you’re new to Twitter, maybe this would be a great time for you to give it a try. I will participate as I am able.

For a number of reasons — most of which are rather boring — I’ve decided to make the CMEpalooza website the main viewing area for the live streaming presentations next week (wait…next week? Next week?!? Already it’s next week?  Yikes.) What this means is that I’ve added a new page to the website, not-so-cleverly named “LIVE“, where participants can go to watch all the presentations as they’re happening. Previously, I had been instructing everyone to go to the CMEpalooza Google+ page to watch the presentations. This is still true and you can watch the presentations there if you wish, but after doing a little experimenting, I think having a dedicated webpage to watch the presentations will make for the easiest viewing experience.

Here are a few things to keep in mind for the live presentations:

• Each presentation is streamed separately. It is not one long streaming video throughout the day. When the first presentation is finished, the video feed you are watching will end. There will be a delay of a few minutes while I get the second presentation set-up. You will need to refresh your page to see the next video feed. Once you see it on your screen, just hit the play button again and wait for the presentation to start. We will try to start every presentation as close to the scheduled start time as possible. We will not start early, so if one presenter finishes early, we will wait for the scheduled time to start the next presentation.
• To send in questions during the presentations, click on the Q&A link that shows up at the bottom of the video. This will open the video in a new window that includes both the video and the ability to ask questions. You need to have a Google/Gmail login in order to ask questions.
• YOU DO NOT NEED TO HAVE A GOOGLE+ OR GMAIL ACCOUNT TO WATCH THE LIVE PRESENTATIONS (can you tell that’s the questionI get asked the most?)
• Yes, all the presentations will be archived for later viewing…unless I screw something up

As part of the prep leading up to the first day of the big event, I have requested that each of the CMEpalooza presenters go through a quick Google+ Hangout training session with me, just to try and work out any potential glitches. I have done seven of them so far and have learned a few important lessons:

1. After trying a variety of techniques, I have decided that the easiest way to communicate the Hangout location to the presenters is to simply email a direct link to them. As much as I despise email, it’s the one form of electronic communication that most people, regardless of how tech savvy they are, seem capable of handling without assistance. I realized fairly quickly that asking each presenter to go to their individual Google+ page and wait for a Hangout invitation to come wasn’t going to cut it. Too confusing. But, I can get a Hangout started, email the presenter(s) the link and all they have to do is click the link and they’re automatically directed to the Hangout. Thus far, this technique has been working reasonably well (side note: it works even better if you email your presenter the correct link, a lesson I learned the hard way…)
2. Continuing with the “Google+ pages are confusing” theme, I’m having second thoughts about having the CMEpalooza Google+ page as the main place for participants to watch the live presentations. Now that I’ve had a little more experience with it, I’m concerned that the Google+ experience/environment might be a little too disconcerting for those who are new to it (which I’ll guess will be the large majority of the “audience”). I’m now leaning towards adding a page to the CMEpalooza website – call is “CMEpalooza Live”, maybe? – and embedding the live video directly on it. When one session ends and the next one is preparing to start, I delete out the old video from the “CMEpalooza Live” page and add the new one. That way, participants can stay on the same page and only have one thing to look at on that page. They only need to refresh their screen to see the next live presentation. Participants will still be able to watch via the Google+ page if they prefer – they’re available there automatically.
3. It is a good system, but not a perfect system. The video and/or audio quality can waver depending on the presenter’s computer or webcam or internet connection or headphones or any number of other factors. However, my goal for CMEpalooza is not to be perfect. I’d be happy with “pretty good” and satisfied with “not bad”. Just because a presenter’s audio isn’t perfectly synched with their video doesn’t mean they can’t be learned from. And as I keep reminding myself, no one has paid anything for this, including me, so I can live with a little imperfection.
4. I am now 99% sure that I can actually pull this off. That’s pretty good considering I was at about 50% when I first started.