But in response to your question, I agree about fora for the most part – they were web 2.0 before there WAS a web 2.0. They’re just not for everyone.

The web 2.0 community is sort of like a high school dance. The kids that like to organize the whole thing would probably prefer a centralized wiki. The social kids (and the ones who are always first on the dance floor) would most likely prefer a forum, and the ones with the courage to show up but not dance unless asked/dared/dragged kicking and screaming would probably prefer their own blogs.

I know there are a ton of holes in that analogy (or is that a metaphor?), as well as some crossover, but that’s roughly how I see it.

Don’t downplay presentation slides. Presentation software is designed for communication, and that’s what you are doing as a presenter. If you can enhance your message with images, video, sound, animation, furthering the goals of your presentation, then use PowerPoint (or whatever). It’s certainly not appropriate in all situations, but when appropriate, use the heck out of it.

As for wikis, mine have never been utilized to the degree that I would like. But you give the best reasons why, and I would suggest that the main one is that the teacher work condition is not conducive to this kind of communication. It is still very much a solitary endeavor, not one of collaboration. Still, I wrote a hack for PMWiki (the opensource wiki engine that I use) that enables attendees to create their own wiki page on the fly, but have it linked back to the online handouts.

I disagree about the wiki being about one person. However, the presentation usually is, so although wikis make a great way to share online handouts and receive some content from attendees, the main reason that I use them is to model them.

Now if you do any extended workshops, wikis may just be the thing.

I agree about the forums (fora). I usually ask attendees to use their wiki page as simply a place to post their session notes. That way, everyone’s notes are available to everyone else, each sharing aspects that were personally valuable. However, if you want people to develop ideas, adding onto each others insights, then forums are definitely the way to go. (Latin was the only foreign language I passed, because you don’t need to be able to hear well, because you don’t have to speak it.)

I like your idea about a conference discussion board. But I personally find it too centralized. Again, I said personally. What I like about blogging is that if the conference establishes a conference tag, and presenters are encouraged to have a session tag, and you have a question about a session you attended, you simply blog your question, tag it, and people will read it and respond, either through comments or through their blogs, which will be tagged appropriately — and they do this because they have turned their ears out (to the blogosphere), rather than turning them in (to a forum site). It becomes one huge and expanding discussion board, but the part that you see is very personal, depending on what you are aggregating. I’ve written about Personal Learning Networks before.

But I agree wholeheartedly with you, that discussion boards have been unfairly overlooked by the Web 2.0 conversation. It kicks in what it’s good at, idea building.

Great luck to you!

– dave –

Yours,

Chris