Improving Town Meetings

I thought Robin's post in her blog about her frustration during the last Town Meeting was great:

http://secondlife.blogs.com/change/2004/12/sometimes_i_hat.html

I posted a response on her blog...but I'll copy it here since I'd love to hear more forum discussion about this.

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Robin, thanks for sharing your frustration and thoughts about this situation.

If it's any consolation, this is a classic problem I've seen time and time again in my own experience with using new IT-based communication mediums. It has to do with how we conceptualize new communication mediums, how we often try to apply unrealistic expectations to them, as well as understanding the basic biological limitations of our own brains when it comes to communicating.

As human beings, we are capable of communicating in two basic ways...synchronously and asynchronously. In an asynchronous environment, we can process many different things at the same time. We can pick and choose what we want to say and spend a long time in coming up with thoughtful responses. This is why technology like online bulletin boards works very well when discussing complex concepts and ideas.

In a synchronous environment, we run into serious issues regarding our own biology. In a synchronous interaction between people, other communication "cues" become critical. Speed of response, body language, social proxemics...they all play a big role in how we interpret things. We also are seriously limited in how many simultaneous conversations we can process concurrently in real-time. As human beings, we are "designed" to be able to communicate synchronously in small groups (5-10 people). We are incapable of handling anything involving more than that.

I think the basic concept of a "town meeting" where an individual is trying to concurrently interact with hundreds of people is unrealistic. People will unintentionally feel slighted ("how come she didn't answer me right away?"....important cues such as social proxemics go out the window ("I'm sitting way here in the back...can she even see me?"...and when you try to process too many multiple conversations in real-time it's inevitable that you'll stumble verbally.

Successful real-time "chats" using Second Life or other means (instant messaging, multiuser chatrooms) are possible. We've all had them. Sitting in SL around a campfire with a small group of friends. Chatting via AIM with friends and loved ones. But those situations simply don't "scale" beyond at most 5-10 people at a time. If you feel like you are "typing as fast as you can"...well, then the system has broken down. Not a failure on your part, but a failure of an unrealistic attempt to scale the system.

I think having Town Meetings in the current model is doomed to fail. Citizens will feel alienated and unsatisfied, and Lindens will feel frustrated and overextended. A more distributed system, where people are in small groups communicating synchronously combined with an asynchronous component, would make more sense to me.

IT-based communication tools are just tools. The trick is to figure out how to use them to augment our own biological skills and limitations at communicating. Given the skills, creativity, and motivation of everyone in SL (both citizens and Lindens), I think it's definitely doable.

-John

One idea kicking around in my head would be to have "Town Hall Radio" broadcasts via streaming radio. SL supports streaming radio on any land parcel, so people could tune in to such a station using the built-in capability of the SL client.

Lindens could verbally make pre-written announcements to the community, which would carry a much greater emotional impact than simply "cutting and pasting text" into a chat window.

Lindens could also have citizens "calling in" using either the telephone or a free computer-based setup (Skype comes to mind). Lindens could then communicate verbally with people in realtime and broadcast that to everyone in SL.

"Town Hall Talk Radio!"

You could also save and re-broadcast the town hall sessions around the clock. Let people hear what they missed.

Not a replacement for inworld text chat....or a replacement for asynchronous forum-type discussions. But a new way to convey Town Hall issues in a medium (voice) with much more emotional bandwidth.

Some Excellent! suggestions John.


Do you think LL be accused of being unfair and of favoritism because they didn't answer everyone one who called in?

They did it once for an upgrade not so long ago... where Philip famously screwed up pronouncing my name.

I must have missed that....was it a one-time thing? Just a broadcast of announcements or did they talk to people live?

Ah... John... you articulate those points so well. That was most excellent. I have a few quick feelings:

-radio broadcasts, unless accompied by some sort of closed-captioning or afterwards text transcripts, are going to be unable to be enjoyed by the hearing-impared such as myself. To have both would be a boon.

-I do wish for more fluid ways to communicate virtually in the future. Such as, more commonplace "pedalboards" under the texts so you can actually TALK AND WALK AT THE SAME TIME *bigtime grin*

-I'm autistic so I have no common sense and can't really interpret body language... at all. Trying to learn to, tho -- I've said this before and I'll say it again... gestures crack me up

-there is definitely a communications breakdown involving such past jokes as "Haney the human firewall", but there are also redundant questions that get asked at Town Halls but are not answered because, although well meaning, it is likely they have been answered before -- or could not be answered better at the present time. We'd all like crystal balls. Sadly, this is not the case.

Also...

-I encourage everyone to practice typing more to better their WPM. This helps not only with SL, but with all keyboard-based computer activities, and while we may have human bottlenecks that come down to the individual, self-improvement goes a long way.


I am personally in favor of the methodology of continuing to do Town Halls as basically half-planned, half-spontaneous events. That way, you get the fun and humor that comes with off-the-cuff answers, but the serious responses that have been prepared beforehand as well. To lean too much to the latter would be sloppy chaos -- to do the inverse would be rigid, stiff, and impersonal. So, it's a sort of bouncy balance.

Was just after streaming became possible... they did a town hall meeting streamed.
Talking back was in IM same as usual.

Well, I think you could handle it the same way talk radio stations do. People would call in and be in a queue. Or maybe run an online lottery to give out a finite number of "caller slots" to anyone who wants to ask their question and receive a realtime verbal interaction with a Linden on the radio. That might be better and fairer.

There's only so much time, so to make sure everyone has a voice for each Town Meeting maybe there could also be a special thread in the forums or somewhere else where people can asynchronously post a question or two during the meeting. After the Town Meeting is over, the thread could be closed and all the questions would be guaranteed to be answered by the Lindens?

Good points. I also think that having a text transcript of the whole radio thing afterwards would be key. Not sure how you could do live closed-captioning...I'm not familiar with any way to do that.

And I totally agree in that having a "bouncy balance" between fun/humor/off-the-cuff answers and serious pre-prepared responses is key. I think the whole point of Town Hall interaction is to have that balance...overall it should be an event that informs as well as entertains people. Which is why I was thinking a "talk radio" component would be a neat addition, adding a lot of emotional bandwidth.

Still thinking about the idea of having a "talk radio" streaming shoutcast radio station where people "call in" and having the conversation broadcast.

Apparently other people have done this:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=195959

From my brief research on this, it looks like using Skype makes the most sense. It's free to run, free to make calls to other Skype users, and the quality is very good as far as IP telephony is concerned.

Maybe I'll just go ahead and try to set up my own shoutcast broadcaster and test out people calling me via Skype, then broadcasting the conversations live. As a proof of concept.

Prototype-Second-Life-Talk-Radio. Heh...."Prototype" in every sense of the word.

Gotta get cracking on this....