Monitoring Academic Conferences Realtime Visualization and Retrospective Analysis

Monitoring Academic Conferences: Real-time Visualization and Retrospective Analysis of Backchannel Conversations Awalin Sopan PJ Rey, Brian Butler, Ben Shneiderman Human Computer Interaction Lab, Dept of Computer Science, Dept of Sociology, College of Information Studies (i. School) University of Maryland

Typical Conference Experience Conferences • Present our work and get feedback. • Extend our professional network. • Know about others research. Should have cited Markov! Nice talk.

Backchannel Conversation We can use online social networks, but …

Focus of Interest in Conference participant • Identify important people: whose research is getting more attention, whom to connect with. • Know what is happening on a session. • What topics are popular. organizers • Engage participants in discussion. • Intervene when necessary.

Focus of Interest in Conference participant People Sessions organizers Topics Logistics

Our Contributions Conference Monitor: A real-time monitoring tool. Analysis of the backchannel conversation.

Collected tweets about this conference as backchannel conversation sample. -Total 4828 tweets over one month. -Total 593 participants.

Real-time Analysis

Conference Monitor A web-based real time monitoring tool for conference organizers and participants.

• Demo

Participation dropped after lunch break opening morning keynote afternoon lunch

Talks in room d 1 was less discussed Opening Session

Talks in room d 1 was less discussed Opening Session

Keynote speaker and his interviewer gained all the attention

all tweets during the keynote mentioning keynote speaker mentioning the interviewer

Remote Participation

Increase Remote Participation: Why All remote participants Most active remote participant Increases overall visibility 34% retweets were from remote participants

Increase Remote Participation: How read tweets, watch live streaming Allow easy communication with the speakers. Allow questions from the remote participants. Live streaming of the presentations.

Participate Remotely: Why Followers growth of in -person participants Followers growth of remote participants

Annotation by the Organizers

Retrospective Analysis

Dynamic Community Creation Mention network

Lessons Learned • Organizers found the tool useful to answer their question. • Sessions, parallel tracks, speakers - these aspects make academic conferences different from other events. • Remote participation increased visibility.

We cordially thank: Catherine Plaisant, Jae-wook Ahn, Ann Rose, NSF (grant IIS 096852) Contact: @awalinsopan awalin@cs. umd. edu