We have made arrangements for several internet-based tools to be used during the upcoming conference in Chicago, for both participants who will be at the conference as well as for those of you unable to be here. All should be up and running by Thursday, Oct. 6, and some, like the wiki, are already available. 1. Tag This Conference! aoir and aoir6 You're it. We need your help to make it easy for all of us to find the websites, pictures & blog entries related to the conference. Just use the tags aoir and aoir6 in del.icio.us, Flickr or with Technorati, then check out http://www.technorati.com/tag/aoir or aoir6 for the combined results. What is tagging? It's a way to give online content a little extra context by adding keywords called tags. Usually people tag their own collections of bookmarks or photographs so that they can find them later, but they can also be used to help other people find online content. When we agree to use the same tag it's easy for everyone to find things. What are del.icio.us, Flickr and Technorati? Del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager where users save their links. Anything with a URL can be bookmarked in del.icio.us and described by tags and extended notes. Flickr is a popular photo sharing site that uses tags. Technorati is a blog indexing site and it collects the tags that bloggers use to describe their posts. It also displays information from del.icio.us and Flickr in its results. Don't want to sign up for these services? No signing up required! Visit http://emt.url123.com/aoir6 for details. 2. The Backchannel Don't wait until the question and answer session to discuss an interesting presentation with your colleagues. Share ideas and comment on papers as they're delivered via Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Each of the AoIR conference rooms has a corresponding chat room for backchannel discussion. Connection details and recommended chat clients will be posted in each room. Increasingly popular at technology conferences and in college classrooms, backchannel discussions allow for quick fact checking and can create a greater sense of community amongst both audience members and presenters. More details about the server and channels will be made available soon. 3. The Conference wiki A wiki is available for each conference session (organized by session, http://wiki.aoir.org/index.php?title=Internet_Research_6.0, as well as by meeting room, http://wiki.aoir.org/index.php?title=Internet_Research_6.0: _Theme_Pages). Whether you are a presenter, conference participants, AoIR member or air-l subscriber, share your thoughts about each session here. 4. Internet Survey How familiar are you with some of the trendiest Internet developments (such as wikis and blogs)? Would you like to compare your media consumption with that of your parents (and/or children)? Please take 10 minutes of your time to complete a “Generations Survey”. When you finish the questionnaire, you will see a snapshot of the general results. The resulting data will be available to the conference attendees, AoIR members and subscribers to the AoIR e-mail list (air-l). All respondents will be anonymous. Link: http://generations-survey.notlong.com These efforts to use the internet to enhance conference participation are part of a project organized by graduate students at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Data from them will be made anonymous and analyzed for coursework. Thanks particularly to David Elfving and Ericka Menchen Trevino for their work on the technology for it.