Saturday, April 14, 2012

Event invitations evalutation

Unfortunately, nobody I invited came to our amazing exposition on digital society. I thought I did a pretty good job of inviting people, and I found quite a few that were pretty interested, but I guess not! I didn't see anyone on the twitter stream from my invite list, and though I didn't check the uStream or whatever it was called, I doubt anyone showed up there either. I guess people just have a lot on their plates, and an invitation to a 'digital revolution' isn't what they're looking for in on a thursday night. However, it was a good experience to reach out and spread the word. Here's some of the high-lights from my invitation efforts.

1) One of the first people I invited, I didn't actually get the name of, though I did post about him last week. I overheard him going off about a paradigm shift in education, the opening of the publishing industry, the need to educate kids in content creation - Golden! I thought he'd come for sure, but in retrospect I should've done more than show him the website and extend an oral invitation. As old-school as they are, sometimes fliers serve as a really handy reminder.

2) I emailed Dale Stephens from Uncollege.org earlier in the semester about something for a blog post, and he emailed me back! So, I emailed him again, inviting him to come check out what we've got on Open Education and the changes it could bring. In his defense, he says on his website that it takes him a while to get to new emails. Too bad 1 weeks notice isn't enough, because I think he would've had some really good input!

3) Randall Munroe, from xkcd.com - While he doesn't have any particular ties to openness specifically, he's a little bit involved in everything that's going on in the 'interwob'. It's easy to tell from his comic and blog that he's passionate and knowledgeable about copyright, open source software, and open science. Also, I went to school with his brother! Unfortunately, this small tie was not enough to illicit either a response or participation. Oh well.

4) Eric Raymond - I hold no grudges against this man for not getting back or participating, because he has already done so darn much for openness. I've followed him on Google+ for the past couple of weeks, and after referencing a lot of his work for the Openness chapter, I felt it a good idea to invite him, citing how his works had been central in my research and linking to the website. It's okay Eric. You can check it out when you're finished with your next open-source project.

5) Prof. Roper - The head of Computer Science for undergraduates here at BYU, I invited him along with the rest of his CS 124 class. He seemed kind of interested when I explained what it was to his class, and recommended everyone show up for the refreshments, but looks like brownies weren't a big enough of a draw.

6) Ping Chu, my friend's dad, is a system analyst for Capitol 1. He's an extremely intelligent man, heavily involved in computers, and even though he lives on the opposite end of the continent, I thought it highly likely he would show some interest. I did invite him via facebook, though, so he probably didn't check it in time. I did invite 100+ other people on facebook, but I haven't heard anything back from them either. Maybe facebook just isn't that great for this kind of thing?

7) I take that back, I got feedback from two people on facebook. Although, both people had already been invited by others (six degrees of seperation?) When I did get feedback on this event, the further people were from the actual locale, the less excitement they showed. I tried encouraging people to participate online via stream or twitter, but lets be realistic - most of the people I know think twitter is retarded, and I can't say I disagree entirely.

8) I also invited my roommates! They're actually nice guys, I promise, but they aren't the most technical of people. Thus, when invited to a seminar on how digital openness will change society, they looked confused, asked what digits were, and went back to playing with rocks. Honestly, though, they aren't interested in the digital world. Ironic, since they spend so much time on it...

9) I invited all my friends who had technology related majors, IT, IS, CS, etc. They all though it was an interesting idea, and since they actually use twitter, I fully expected them to show up. Unfortunately, they were too busy celebrating the last day of classes to hop online and 'tweet' on into our presentation.

10) The day off, after getting little to no response to the event, I started inviting random people in desperation. I'd spent a semester working in this class, and I wanted people to hear about what we've learned, gosh darn it! I got mixed responses from strangers, ranging from confusion about what exactly 'openness' was to the more tech-savvy's excitement about connecting with anything that resembled Linux in real life. A few people gave maybes, and one or two people perked up at the word 'refreshments'. Maybe next time there's an event like this, you should put pizza on the posters instead of Uncle Sam.

So that's who I invited! I shook the dust of an old twitter account I made years ago just for the event, and tried to stir up some conversation there. I saw a few non-classmates show up in the stream, which was pretty exciting! Mostly college students, but the word was getting out there! Like I said at the beginning, I didn't see much response from those I personally invited, but it was good to see that some people did show up. I can't imagine how many invites were extended to get the number of people who showed up there, but I can imagine how hard it would've been without social media. I still would've really appreciated having a flier or two to hand out, and I don't think I saw a single poster on campus for this. Digital campaigning is great, but sometimes you just can't beat spreading the world the old fashioned way.

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