1. 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 (iSchool) University of Maryland

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

3. Backchannel Conversation We can use online social networks, but …

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

5. Focus of Interest in Conference PeopleSessionsTopicsLogistics organizers participant

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

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

8. Real-time Analysis

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

10. Demo

11. Participation dropped after lunch break opening morning lunch keynote afternoon

12. Talks in room d1 was less discussed Opening Session

13. Talks in room d1 was less discussed Opening Session

14. Keynote speaker and his interviewer gained all the attention

15. all tweets during the keynote mentioning keynote speaker mentioning the interviewer

16. Remote Participation

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

18. 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. Allow easy communication with the speakers. Allow questions from the remote participants. Live streaming of the presentations.

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

20. Annotation by the Organizers

21. Retrospective Analysis

22. Dynamic Community Creation Mention network

23. 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.

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