I had planned on being in Toronto for the 2009 ASAE Annual Conference. My flight and hotel were booked, my bags were partially packed (they always are) and I even won the coveted Toonie prize for creating the first feed successfully submitted to ASAE for inclusion in their aggregated event feed. I love everything about Annual – from the build-up to all of the on-site activity and interaction to the post-conference buzz that I carry with me for weeks after – but for the past two years it simply wasn’t meant to be. Finances have been tight and the past year hasn’t been necessarily kind to me so I had to make the command decision to bail. It was probably one of the toughest decisions I’ve had to make in quite some time, and while I am watching the event unfold without me from the comfort of my home office envious of all of my friends who are obviously having a great time, I know that my decision was for the best.

However, I also refused to let my distance keep me away from the action and have found that ASAE has done a pretty good job of laying the foundation that allows folks like me, who couldn’t attend, to stay tapped into the action and activity. I say “pretty good” because I am noticing things that could be changed to provide an even better virtual experience. This isn’t a rant on how ASAE isn’t meeting my individual needs – I think they are doing a good job at that – just a perspective of someone who had planned on being there but couldn’t and would love to be engaged in more of an immersive experience.

Here are some initial thoughts:

1. The ASAE Annual Hub rocks. This is great for physical and virtual attendees alike and I love the mobile integration – when I tested it a few weeks ago it worked perfectly on my BlackBerry and I heard that iPhone users had a similar great experience. However, one nag that I am seeing is the Twitter feed does not update in real time. Call me a zealot but if you go to the trouble of creating a “one-stop-shop” for all things conference related don’t make me have to (a) constantly refresh the screen if I want to see the updated stream or (b) have to go somewhere else (e.g. TweetChat or Twubs) to get what I want. It’s not to hard to integrate the technology to make this possible but for somebody who does understand the technology it’s somewhat of a glaring oversight. Again the Annual Hub rocks – refreshing does not.

2. Speaking of the Twitter stream, I applaud ASAE for embracing Twitter and all of it’s goodness for disaggregating content creation and crowd sourcing live coverage of the many events that comprise the conference itself. I do worry – especially given Twitter’s troubles over the past few weeks – that this is a huge risk equivalent to placing all of one’s eggs in a single basket. All that separates success from #FAIL is another #DDOS attack on Twitter and the stream would effectively grind to a halt. This would not only isolate virtual attendees who are monitoring the stream to stay as in-tune with what is going on as possible but it would also probably disrupt event communications as Twitter also serves a secondary purpose as a back channel for planning and coordinating attendee activities. It’s not always the first thing on the mind of technology folks but risk mitigation is tremendously important – always have a plan B and plan C.

   I think an option for future consideration would be using something like Laconica – the opensource twin of Twitter that could be installed on a private server and could keep going even if Twitter went down. Identi.ca is a great example of a Laconica site (here is a good review too). And because Twitter and Laconica have an extremely similar interface and the API is pretty much identical, the Laconica-powered stream could serve as the primary, while still streaming updates to Twitter, it could serve as a very viable fail safe and still involve anybody who is interested. Sure it’s a bit more complicated than I have laid out here, but it’s not overly complicated and ASAE has continuously proven to be extremely proficient with technology so I have no doubt they could pull this off with aplomb.

3. I saw a tweet from ASAE announcing the fact that 70 of 115+ sessions were being recorded and were available on physical media in exchange for the coupon on the learning journal. This is, and has been a great value add for conference attendees. Let’s face it, it’s always tough to get to every session you want to attend and this allows you to get a whole lot more bang for your buck. But what about virtual attendees? There’s nothing here for us. Since the session are already recorded why not pick a few select (possibly highly attended or some other quantitative measure) and post them online for virtual attendees to enjoy. It’s not terribly expensive or time consuming to have someone grab the audio and slide deck and throw them into a tool like Articulate Presenter or Camtasia and produce a pretty-good quality presentation for online viewing. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough to make me want to buy the recordings later or at least know that this is a must attend event in the years to come. Logistically it could be done overnight and posted on the Hub site the next morning. To me that would represent a terrific value add.

Let me reiterate that I think ASAE is doing a fantastic job with Annual this year. I can see it based on my own experience with the tools and resources they have put in place and through the great feedback that I am seeing from others, I just wanted to highlight some areas that would make the virtual attendee experience even better than it is now. I’m sure I’ll have more to share as I continue to observe/participate from afar, but until then have fun!