Today I experienced a new conference sensation. I’m all for new experiences and today, I’m pleased to say, brought lots of good ones. Being someone who has a background in an industry where conferences and events are held in huge auditoriums where there is relatively *zero* interaction with the attendees, other than possibly a badly managed Q&A session at the end, and ticket prices are excessive for the majority, b.TWEEN 08 was like a breath of fresh air.

Sponsored by Channel 4, the BBC, the Technology Strategy Board and the Northwest Regional Development Agency and held in at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester today, the event aims to bring together attendees in an environment that supports cross-fertilization of ideas, knowledge sharing and innovation. An opportunity for independents and large investors to connect over great ideas.

I picked up on the conference via micro-blogging service Twitter and visited the website to check out the live webcast - powered by Knura. The quality of the webcast was initially superb: clear, timely and well filmed.  With the exception of a couple of microphone-sharing hitches and a few minor disruptions to the feed, it was a brilliant delivery format.  The long delays in the video and sound delivery after lunch were frustrating and lost a lot of people, which was a shame.  The service was also supported by a live chat panel which was being streamed to the conference and was projected on the wall next to the presenters.

This recognition and inclusion of the *backchannel* is not a new phenomena but is still relatively new to most conference formats.  It’s  a great thing for:

1. Bringing the audience closer to the topics of discussion; a stronger feeling of involvement and participation results - something often missing and desperately wanted (see the comments regarding the backchannel at the NESTA Innovation Edge earlier this year).
2. Adding a further dimension to the conversation - those on chat tend to add to the content, providing links to relevant sites, adding their views on the subject matter, making connections about the content that otherwise wouldn’t be published or shared until after the event.

Overall - let’s have more of this, especially from the non-digital, non-web2.0 events companies.  It’s a winner. My carbon footprint was *ZER0*, I did not travel from the South East coast to Manchester to attend. It cost me nothing and I got to attend, experience, participate and learn from a great conference. You can watch b.TWEEN08 on their YouTube channel.