June 2006
Making an Online Community Click
Supernova conferees connect using the latest Web-based tools, extending an elite networking event into the blogosphere where virtually anyone can participate.

By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor



Supernova exploded onto the technology event scene in 2002 through the sheer force of one man’s personal network. Now in its fifth year, Supernova 2006, June 21–23 in San Francisco, is connecting thought leaders in emerging technologies from around the world — though not all in person.
“It’s an extended social network. There are only two to three degrees of separation between the people at Supernova,” says technology analyst Kevin Werbach, Founder of Supernova Group LLC (www.supernovagroup.net) and Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia.

Werbach’s close-knit network has stayed connected even as it quadrupled from 100 to 400 attendees — plus immeasurable thousands who participate virtually — through Supernova’s Community Connection, a collection of online tools hand-picked to push, pull and publish information in every way imaginable.

“We think about the conference as a connecting point for lots of people. Content gets generated by us, the conference organizers, and by our attendees,” Werbach says. “We provide different tools to take advantage of that content and redirect it to the worldwide audience. The idea is that people can select any piece they want.”

Provide the right tools
The launch point for the Supernova online community is the conference Web site (www.supernova2006.com), redesigned for 2006 by San Francisco-based Ideacodes (www.ideacodes.com). The enhanced interface presents Community Connection as the first option in a right-column menu. From there, visitors select the tools they want to use to participate in a “parallel, virtual event.”

Werbach selects tools that are easy to use and integrate with the Web site infrastructure, and barters sponsorships for licensing agreements and technical support, so dollar costs are minimal. In 2005, the conference Web logs (blogs) were powered by Silkware (www.silkware.com), and the Wiki was powered by Socialtext (www.socialtext.com).

Community Connection tools for 2006 were still under consideration at press time, but Werbach expects the offerings to be similar to last year’s only with more attendee-generated content. They include:

• Uberblog — As the central clearinghouse for Supernova-related content, the Uberblog (aka, super blog) aggregates content from about 20 blogs maintained by the conference organizers and speakers. It’s the place to go to participate in discussions surrounding scheduled sessions and events, as well as other commentary that has been “tagged” for Supernova.

• Supernova Weblog — The official conference blog provides session notes posted by the conference organizers and about 10 volunteers. “This year we started the blog three months before the show to generate discussion and a following by a large group of people,” Werbach says.

• Blogcast — A video-based blog hosted by conference commentator and industry analyst David Weinberger, blogcast presents interviews with speakers and key conference participants as well ad hoc commentary by attendees. In 2006, attendee audio podcasts and video blogs will be included in the stream, which also feeds through media sponsors CNET.com and Knowledge@Wharton.

• IT Conversations — An archive of select conference session audio recordings produced and hosted by ITConversations (www.itconversations.com), this tool enables anyone to listen to Supernova sessions, any time. Werbach says popular 2005 sessions have been downloaded several hundred times.

• E-mail Directory — A list of the time-limited e-mail addresses assigned to each attendee for the duration of the conference, this password-protected directory enables people to contact each other without exposing their private e-mail addresses on the Web.

• Supernova Wiki — A collaborative blog where participants contribute the content, the Wiki provides a central location to exchange information, coordinate activities and share conference notes. “The great thing about a Wiki is that it’s editable by anyone who views it,” Werbach says. “We pre-populate it with a set of pages. Sometimes they just fill it in, and sometimes they take it in unexpected directions.” Community members log in to create personal Supernova pages, organize birds-of-a-feather sessions and post commentary, including a “hecklers page” where off-site participants can rant.

• IRC Chat — A real-time interactive forum to discuss session topics, the chat room unites people who are on site with those participating from afar. “For the first time last year, we had attendees who participated in the chat room generate summaries or pullout quotes from the ‘back-channel’ conversations, and we’d put those up on the screen during breaks,” Werbach says. “As I moderated the sessions, I would work in those comments.”

• Attention Stream — Tracking conference chatter throughout the blogosphere, which encompasses all blogs on the Web, this veritable flood of information is generated by an automated search for anything that has been tagged “Supernova.” It aggregates various kinds of related content — such as blog posts, photos and chat logs — to create a real-time stream.

With so much community participation, commentary inevitably turns snarky. Volunteers monitor the official conference blogs and Wiki for grossly inappropriate content or spam that should be deleted.

“Some of the stuff that gets posted is humorous, and some of it is sarcastic, but I don’t find it disruptive,” Werbach says. “People will have the reactions they have to the conference. The challenge to the organizers is to make the conference good.”

Measure success qualitatively
If it’s good, Supernova’s rampant information sharing creates a “dense cloud of ideas” that seeds a flurry of insights, which may influence the way emerging technologies keep people connected in an increasingly decentralized world. Whether they’ve achieved this goal becomes apparent when Supernova wraps up with a “Back-Channel Roundtable,” giving participants a chance to air their views in panel-discussion format.

“When people express concern about these open forums, it’s because there is no accountability. But if they participate in these discussions, they have to understand that people are listening, and they have to think about their remarks,” Werbach says. That said, he adds: “I want them to say what they think. The participants are contributing as much to the success of Supernova as I am. These tools give the conference participants a sense of empowerment that they’re contributing to the event.”

Maintaining that he does not track visitor statistics for the Web-based tools, Werbach says he measures success not in
numbers of participants but in revenues, profitability and positive buzz. “Qualitatively, it’s the extent to which people think highly
of the event, come back and talk about it as a leading event in this space.”