It is a general fact that organizers have had little or no interest in promoting contact between participants outside the framework of the planned programme, receptions and tours. The low status of any "message board" is an example of this. The sterility of the conventional "suggestion box" is another.
A special effort is therefore required to distinguish the messaging process from such "low status, insignificant" initiatives (see Organiser Involvement / S2; Evaluation and Performance Indicators / S3). Some participants will immediately recognize the opportunity it offers. Others will respond to encouragement from the chairperson in a formal announcement. Others will wait to see the extent to which their colleagues make use of it.
Some participants, often the more eminent, consider it beneath their dignity to be seen to be examining scraps of paper on a message board. Some will not even be seen to examine typed Bulletins on a wall display. Hence the value of personal copies in some way related to the formal conference documentation. The presence of amusing comments may ensure that the Bulletins are read during boring moments in plenary sessions - but they may also reinforce the disdain with which such "unsanctioned" perceptions are viewed by "serious" participants. Participants may recognize that they can use "doodling-time" moments fruitfully in order to formulate additional comments of their own.
Involvement
Working against use of unexpected and involving initiatives like participant messaging is a tremendous problems of passivity which traditional procedures have instilled into participants and which has been reinforced by the conventional attitude of organizers. Many participants expect to experience a conference like a set of television programmes amongst which they can choose by "changing channel". They are quite content that organizers should provide few occasions for unplanned interchanges and are thus unsure how to behave when such occasions occur. It is not clear what proportion of participants perceive themselves as contributors to the exercise, as opposed to consumers of what is offered. Unfortunately there are many conferences where such unquestioning acceptance is a guarantee of the unproductivity of the event. The condition is often appreciated by organizers who count the obedience with which participants follow the programme as an indication of the success of the event. Participant initiatives are perceived as threatening
It would be interesting to explore the possibility that conventional speaker-oriented conferences, dominated by masculine influences, require and engender a feminine passivity on the part of the audience. In this sense, participant interaction messaging may be seen as a feminine (networking) communication process to counterbalance the masculine (hierarchically structured) use of microphone/amplifier systems. It could also be argued that the latter provides a channel for collective conscious expression whereas the former may provide a channel for a less visible, and more sensitive, form of awareness.