At the LesBlogs conference in Paris this week, Six Apart exec and long-time blogger Mena Trott spoke on civility, a topic I’ve raised several times. Then she flipped out on an audience member who was typing uncomplimentary comments about her presentation into the backchannel message board that was being simultaneously posted on the screen.
Mistake number one was to get huffy in front of her audience, which detracted from her presentation. Mistake number two was to get mad at someone who was providing feedback in the manner requested by the conference, of which she was a major sponsor.
She and the backchannel critic Ben Metcalfe settled their differences after the talk, and all is resolved. Except there are several dozen blog postings about the incident, online video, and hundreds of comments to those postings.
Scott Baradell of Media Orchard says Trott needs media training, and should have started with an apology. I can’t disagree.
Looking back on the incident, Trott has this takeaway:
"We both came to a good question that could, in theory, sum up my entire speech:
"Is it possible to have the sort of productive face-to-face connection or conversation that Ben M. and I had offline in an online world? And what can we, as bloggers, do to facilitate that?"
Metcalfe’s takeaway seemed to be that he dealt with the incident better than Trott did, and he behaved honestly and honourably. His stance can’t hurt his blog readership, as he goes through his second highly-publicized scrap with a high-profile blogger in the past few months.
I’ll always be an advocate for being civil, because I think it shows respect for the person you’re dealing with. Of course, civility doesn’t always work. It’s not even appropriate in some circumstances. But it’s a good starting point.
Tags: Ben Metcalfe; Mena Trott