Dyer-Bennet is The WELL's Conference Host Manager, and cornerstone of the The WELL Conferencing Team. The WELL is divided into areas called Conferences , each with many conversational threads called Topics . It ends up feeling immediate and often eloquent, like transcripts of face to face conversation, but there is no need to meet at a set time. When you start out you'll want to look at some of the Front Pages where the Conferences do outreach for new participants. The basic way to participate is to read up on a recent conversation, add your comment if you have one, and then return, perhaps the next day, to follow the responses.
Some Topics are fast moving, some are slow accumulations of resources or ideas.
Many people keep up on all the Topics in a given conference, and keep those Conferences on a personal list to make it easy to catch up. Other WELL members just check in here and there around the system with no particular pattern. Frankly, going back to the same conversation is probably a good strategy, because it lets you gain some context, and begin to be known over time for your suggestions, opinions, and contributions in general. While it doesn't happen in real-time like chat does, conferencing can have an equally powerful sense of being vital living dialog, and favors more thoughtful participation. The conversations end up looking a lot like a long scroll with the transcript of a conversation on it.