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I received pictures from Jordan of Pathable at FOWA today. Jordan reports that Pathable was well received at the event.

It inspired me to review the Pathable SMS service usage statistics. Pathable SMS allows people to communicate with each other using ad hoc text messaging groups based on their profile tags. For example, if I added “developer” to my profile I would then receive any text messages sent to the “developer” tag. It’s the second time we’ve ever deployed the service at a large event so we are still learning how people are using it and tweaking the system accordingly. (Messages are publicy posted in the crowdvine FOWA network, by the way.)

Out of all the attendees about 540 had profiles in the FOWA social network in Crowdvine, out of which another 95 added their phone numbers to join the Pathable SMS service. Given these numbers I’m fairly surprised and pleased at the level of usage we observed. 222 messages were recieved, which resulted in approximately 1100 outbound messages. See figure for usage by day. The conference was from Oct 2 to Oct 5.

Below are the messages sent to the “developer” tag. You can see how it was used for coordination.

I broke down the incoming messages by type to gain a better understanding of command usage. We had many of the typical commands for text messaging services, including “who” to see who was in a tag or “tags” to see which tags a person had. Aside from broadcast messages, people largely sent in help which returned the syntax for the rest of the commands. Not too many messages were command errors.

I think the utility of ad hoc, interest-based text messaging groups for large conferences is fairly clear. The challenge for us is helping users develop trust and familiarity with the system to increase usage. Our biggest limiting factor at FOWA was simply the number of people willing to provide their phone number in their profiles. As the system becomes smoother and people develop familiarity and trust with it I imagine usage of Pathable SMS will increase.

We’re happy to announce that Pathable will be providing our unique buttons and mobile phone service in conjunction with Crowdvine at the upcoming Future of Web Apps conference in London, UK.

This is a premiere event with many notable technology innovators. We hope very much to make it more exciting and accessible to everyone.

You can check out Pathable in action at the conference website: fowa.crowdvine.com

In the past several weeks I have had the joy of attending several conferences: Seattle Mind Camp, a meeting of local technophiles, the Social Computing Sympsium, which brings together leading academics, practitioners, and pundits to discuss social technologies, and ISCRAM, an academic conference for researchers focusing on information systems for crisis management.

These conferences adopted very distinct formats. Both Seattle Mind Camp and the Symposium adopted an Open Space style, which is very discussion-oriented, enabling participants to generate their own discussion topics, in hopes of leading to the emergence of cutting edge themes. ISCRAM, on the other hand, has a very traditional academic style, with paper proceedings and presentations.

As an event organizer (I organized the first two Social Computing Symposiums, workshops, group meetings) these distinct styles really raise the question: why do people go to conferences? Common themes are a) developing collaborative relationships with like-minded people, b) the exchange and development of ideas as a community, and c) learning from each other to accelerate advances in the field as people build on each other’s work. More implicit goals are a) social support from like-minded people, b) having fun conversations over wine with conference buddies who are willing to talk to you about something that would make your friends at home yawn in boredom, and c) exploring career opportunites.

At Seattle Mind Camp I really valued the increased prospect of potential collaborations (informal or formal) because people were co-located. At the Symposium, I felt like I was at a party with old pals, because I had a lot of history with my colleagues there. However, I was left feeling hungry for more of an awareness of their latest work. I had a vague feeling that I had already had many of the conversations, somehow they did not achieve a lot of depth. Now, here at ISCRAM, I find myself really enjoying the depth of knowledge I am developing for an area of research to which I have not had a lot of exposure. It reminds me that yes I do value the sheer new knowledge that one can acquire from an in depth presentation of a research project. I know this sentiment is not too popular in some crowds, but I say bring on extended paper presentations, powerpoint and all!

Obviously, the ideal conference has a mix. Throw in a keynote talk from a mucky muck everyone wants to meet, a few carefully selected presentations showing new innovative work, a few sessions where people discuss whatever they deem interesting, and many opportunities to drink wine and get sloppily philosophical.