Although the submission of papers and participation in academic conferences may be seen as a routine or even a mandatory task, especially when envisioning an academic career, there is little research in the area (de Vries & Pieters, 2007; Jacobs & McFarlane, 2005).

Conferences can be an opportunity to learn, through sharing and knowledge construction. Their designed can stimulate the development of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) and digital habits within communities and networks (Wenger, White, & Smith, 2009) and constitute the ideal vehicle to formal and informal learning and knowledge management (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). Conferences facilitate and enhance the creation of networks, they enable opportunities for informal learning and offer moments of socialization (Siemens, Tittenberger, & Anderson, 2008). Authors like Weller (2011) summarize the functions of a conference as follow: knowledge sharing, validation, networking, recognition and socializing. As L. Anderson & T. Anderson (2010, p. xi) remark

"(…) a professional conference usually consists of formal and informal scheduled talks and presentations by celebrity keynotes. These are usually followed by smaller sessions where members of the organisation are invited to share insights, developments, concerns, and issues in panel of individual presentations."

In this presentation we discuss a case study about the conference myMPeL, an annual conference organized and held from and for the learning community of an online master’s program.

The Conference myMPeL has been held since 2010 as part of the Master Course in Elearning Pedagogy (MPeL), at Universidade Aberta (UAb, the Open University in Portugal). The course has adopted the pedagogical model (Modelo Pedagógico Virtual®) of the UAb (Pereira, Mendes, Morgado, Amante, & Bidarra, 2007), and is a response to a growing need of specialization for those working in the field of distance education and elearning. It seeks to explore emerging models and to develop strategies for the integration of ICT in online education. The MPeL takes place fully online and the Conference myMPeL is the only moment from the entire program held face-to-face (with a streamed online component). It intends to be a moment of socialization and of sharing of developed work by the MPeL's students with the course community and a wider community of professionals interested in online distance education and in the elearning field. According to Kelly, Tonkin and Shabajee (2005), nowadays it is possible to bring the world to a conference auditorium and, at the same time, expand a conference to the world. This is the characteristic of an amplified event (Kelly, 2011). The Conference myMPeL is a conference 2.0, organized and performed with Web 2.0 tools, which applies emerging pedagogies (Siemens & Tittenberger, 2009).

This article presents the outcomes of a study with the following main question: how can the organization format and management of an academic conference which uses Web 2.0 tools contribute to the success of a conference (defined as the achievement of the initial objectives of the organizers and the participants’ expectations regarding learning)?

The main objectives of this study were to understand how the use of Web 2.0 tools facilitate and enhance learning in an academic conference, and to foster improvements in the organization of the Conference myMPeL.

The relevance of this study lays on a contribution to the success of future editions of the Conference myMPeL, as well as to academic and scientific conferences supported by ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), namely Web 2.0 services.

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