On August 27, 2009 we tried an experiment to see what it would be like to allow for some audio storytelling that would drive our twitter chat.  Even before the event there were mixed feelings.  There were others who thought we should try it out.  Here are some of those thoughts

Reasons it is not a good idea: 

• Twitter allows for multi-threaded discussion, audio is single threaded
• Audio allows people to dominate

Reasons it is a good idea:

• Will be able to speak in paragraphs and convey emotion better while at the same time keeping multi-threaded backchannel
• Should always be trying new things to see what works and what doesn't

Unfortunately, it turned out not to be a truly functional experiment because Twitter was lagging by 10minutes so we were "phone-only".  I felt it was worth my time both to hear some voices and with the following takeaways

• Start contests in online community pre-conference that end at conference to drive attendance
• Prove value of community by measuing %age that attend from online community vs. %age that attend from remainder of membership

Here was some of the feedback (completely paraphrased) on the call at the end

• Personal energy level was lower on the call than it is with Twitter Chat because of attention required to follow threads
• Personal energy might have been higher if there were BOTH, but we were limited to phone-only
• Phone-only led to multitasking on other things ie. not full attention 
• Would certainly not want to switch to this format all the time
• Might be good for occassional and probably worth another experiment to see what happens with both audio and Twitter together
• Audio might serve as a good backup for when Twitter is lagging rather than just cancelling the session

I personally believe that different people like different formats.  As our community grows, we may find that we are meeting different target segments in different ways.  It does not have to be an either/or, we may be able to schedule additional sessions as the community grows, and keep the core the same.

You can listen to the call recording for yourself if you were not able to attend.  Look forward to your thoughts