MW2009 and the permanent backchannel

Nina Simon has posted recently on the use of on-line backchannels at the WebWise meeting. She noted that the on-site attendees there primarily used a chat room set up using Today's Meet and Twitter [with the #webwise hashtag]. there was also some collection of links using the webwise tag in del.icio.us.

Museums and the Web 2009 will be the fourth year http://conference.archimuse.com has been live while the conference is taking place. we've usually seen a burst of traffic before and after the meeting, as people create profiles as a 'stake in the ground' that enables others to find them  and participate in more topical discussions. but site usage has never been huge during the meeting -- maybe this year will be different?

we've also got a presence  ...

• on twitter: the mw2009 account [name changed from mw2008] is used mostly for announcements, but check out mw2009's followers. a great way to find other people + museums.
• through the #mw2009 hash tag:  [use it in your tweets]
• with the mw2009 tag generally, for blog postings, or deli.icio.us resources
• through live bloggers: all kinds of MW2009 attendees blog regularly  [use that MW2009 tag so others can find your posts!] see MW2008 posts from Nate for an example. i don't think anyone's used coveritlive @ MW yet, but there's always a first. 
• in the mw2009 aggregated feed -- assembled with Yahoo! Pipes, grabbing blog postings, photos, tweets, whatever... inspired by mike ellis' onetag at mw2008. That's what's in the right column of conference.archimuse.com as MW2009 on the Web ===> over there ===>
• in a Flickr group: mw2009 [join and add your pics -- that's where the images on conference.archimuse.com
  come from]. right now, they are mostly pics of Indianapolis posted by
  our friends there, but when we get to conference time, expect some more
  variety. (see the mw2008 pics).
• on Yelp to identify Indianapolis Restaurants
• A Google map of Indianapolis Venues
• on Facebook and Upcoming
  event pages for the meeting, but they've been mostly about
  announcements/attendance. we chose not to create a Facebook group because there were others
  already covering the territory, like International museum web professionals and Museums in The Digital Age
• with a Museums and the Web Linked In Group that seems to be taking off particularly with Europeans
• and some others that i've probably missed...

now this may seem like a lot, but each of these sites is used in a different way and reaches a different group of people.  some are used more before the meeting, and some after, and some during. some provide persistence, others are more ephemeral. some require known identity, others enable anonymity. wherever materials are posted, we're trying to make sure that things are aggregated so that it's possible to watch what is going on.

it will be interesting to see if chat-like environments take off at MW2009. we've had limited success with chat on-site -- despite having as more ip-addressed devices than people @ mw2008 -- partially because of the problem of parallel sessions. one room or three, or 8 on Friday!??!

what do you think? are we missing a place where MW2009 should be? should we try chat again?  let us know!