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Significant events happen all around us as a way of life. Until the recent convergence of technology that allows us to increasingly experience events from a distance, we’ve been at the mercy of hearing about these events through the second hand reports of others. Conference notes and MP3 audios posted via the internet have given us increased access to information / content, but not to the actual conference experience.

Imagine an Internet “channel” that allows people to experience conferences (and other gatherings) without actually attending. In addition to the notes, blog posts and MP3 audio recordings available after many conferences, visitors to ExponentialChannel will get live streaming video of everything from the crowded halls, to the band, to candid interviews with the speakers. Technology such as live video (ustream.tv and mogulus.com), archived video (youtube.com and vimeo.com), twitter (twitter.com), photo albums (Picasa and Flickr) and aggregated blogs will be used to help people experience the conference in a more personal way from a distance.

The technology now exists to help people who are unable to attend conferences to experience more than reading blog notes. Through a programmed series of live video clips and interviews, audio clips, pictures, and blog and twitter reports from attendees, the technology now exists to expand the conference experience to anyone with an internet experience. Through automation and planning, a large quantity of nearly real-time information from a conference can be posted in ways not previously possible. ExponentialChannel seeks to leverage the continuing flow of high-quality, free technologies that instantly connect people from around the globe.

Each conference featured via ExponentialChannel will have one or more “internet MCs.” These MCs will facilitate the conference for those participating online. Like a football game with booth announcers, lockerroom announcers, and sideline announcers, several MC’s with video cameras are used throughout the conference facility to provide different perspectives. ExponentialChannel will be programmed like a TV station with pre-defined time slots for different video segments (e.g. interviews with specific speakers, tour of conference facility, glimpse of specific sessions, music, etc). Essentially, an online conference experience will be created much in the way of an Entertainment Tonight type internet show. The online conference programming will be posted and promoted weeks in advance of the conference. Our goal is to see the conference impact expand far beyond those attending while at the same time helping foster increased attendance at the conference in future years.

The home page of ExponentialChannel.com will serve like the “guide station” on your cable TV. It will highlight different “channels”, give info from past broadcasts, give highlights of upcoming conferences, have “picture in picture” to show what is currently happening at a conference, etc. We began experimenting with the technology at the 2008 Exponential Conference in Orlando and conducted a more extensive pilot at the 2008 WhiteBoard Sessions. We continued to experiment and learn through the Spring of 2009. We have begun formal development of a new platform that will allow users to create their own channel within minutes. This platform is entering beta testing as we move forward with version 0.2 to increase the ability of channel owners to customize and brand their pages more fully.

Our vision is to create and leverage the benefits of a national platform from which a wide range of national conferences can benefit. It is our intent to facilitate the creation of conference specific “channels” that benefit the individual participating conferences. ExponentialChannel will serve as the internet station through which the conference specific channels gain increased visibility, marketing and promotional value. Our dream is to see all the leading national conferences featured via ExponentialChannel.