photo credit: Rachel Ford James

This year is the first year I am within rock-throwing distance of the convention center, allowing me to pack selectively for the sessions. I’ve stripped down my load to a notebook, cell phone and iPad.

Previous years wireless connectivity and lack of power has left my thoughts recorded with pen and paper. Looking around this year, I see a prevalence of tablets, most notably iPads and dominance of cell phones. Gone are the rows and rows of open laptops and netbooks. Is this an improvement?

Distracted driving has now led into distracted conferencing. Whether tweeting a narrative of each session, browsing down tangents of topics mentioned, or just catching up on things back home, speakers are now competing to keep the attention of the crowd. Could panels’ success be derived from the amount of traffic emanating from the room? Would successful panels have more upload data vs. download?

Now that the attention of everyone is at a premium and  note-taking is a collective activity, can we anticipate future panels to be driven by the community much like the now infamous Zuckerberg keynote a few years back or is this just approaching the annoying audience reaction meter news agencies throw up during presidential debates? I have not seen any requests for panel feedback this year, but my hope is that with real-time feedback devices throughout the audience, panels will become dynamically tailored to what people are looking for, eliminating the need for the distractions in the first place.

Dave Vieser is a VP of Technology in our Chicago office.