Plans for Future Forums

From IRF Wiki

Plans for Future Forums The experience of running the first IR Forum and harvesting the ideas for use in further content development has resulted in the following insights about how to improve the value the conference provides to all involved.

The idea of creating a book to capture the ideas at the conference has proven to be interesting and valuable to all involved. The conference structure and proceedings will be adjusted somewhat to improve the yield of ideas that can be harvested for a book. Specifically the next conference will:

• Be videotaped to allow speakers to be identified.
• Have email addresses published for each topic discussed so that conference participants can mail in ideas and references to interesting material during the conference.
• Have a wiki that will capture the structure of the discussion as the conference is proceeding. This will be available to conference participants during the conference and afterward as well.
• Have researchers, graduate students and writers, who will interview participants during a 30 minute period after each session to gather more ideas that could not be shared during the conference session.
  • The researchers would be available to conduct interviews in English, German, French, and perhaps other languages.
• The research and creation of the book will begin immediately after the conference.

The first IRForum generated a huge amount of excitement and covered extensive topic areas. In creating this book, one of the challenges was organizing the thoughts that ranged widely over so much material. The conference organizers realized in going through this process that more value would be provided to everyone if the agenda was less broad and more focused. The next conference will be focus on the impact and implications of of mashups and will be organized in the following way:

• Each session will be organized around specific questions that the session will seek to analyze and answer.
• Lead speakers will be asked to present specific propositions related to the questions.
• Each session will attempt to identify arguments and objections to the propositions.
• Each session will collect new questions and propositions inspired by the discussion.

Other ideas that may be part of a future conference include:

• Adding a self-organizing session in which participants write proposed agenda items on a white board and then assemble in groups for discussions.
• Adding a session at the end of the conference or an email address to collect ideas for potential topics for the next IR Forum.