Twitter's Transformative Effect on Conferences

I've gone to a lot of enterprise/technology conferences in the last 15 years - and even developed and managed a few. It has always been a somewhat numbing series of presentations, demos, meetings and new faces. If I was really well organized, I had a series of specific meetings lined up but...let's be honest, I was rarely that organized.

With Twitter things have changed a lot - from enabling spontaneous organization (is that possible?!?) to allowing me to participate in presentations without disrupting them.  Here are various examples of how I've seen Twitter transform events:

• Creating demand for a particular event - when people raise their hands and tell each other that they will be at an event, it attracts more people
• Sharing events with a broader audience through hashtags like #C20 and #E20 and photo streams like this one from David Terrar (great conversationalist BTW - even when jet-lagged!)
• Spontaneously planning events like @stevemann did with the Enterprise 2.0 Mayhem dinner which brought together big software company execs, bloggers, interested observers, PR, and consultants all of whom are interested in enterprise social media - great fun and very interesting.
• Finding people at big events 'hey - I'm near the Starbucks, where are you?'
• Audience participation - while I'm not in favor of trash talking during presentations - Twitter allows me to add my perspective to what is being presented and that keeps me more engaged than just sitting and listening - even if no one reads it.
• Meeting 'old' Twitter friends in person and meeting new people in person and continuing the relationship on Twitter

How else have you used Twitter to enhance your event experience?

Comments

[Doug Haslam]

Giving that Twitter broke (I said "Twitter broke!") into awareness for many of us at a big event-- SXSW 2007, this is the ultimate apt topic for Twitter. Your points all ring true for me.

One bullet I would add is "vote with your feet via Twitter." At PodCamp Boston last fall, I either was attracted to one session over another, or was made to feel I wasn't missing everything at a session I couldn't make, all due to Tweets by people at the various sessions. This really put some fuel into my experience as an attendee, and brought all the attendees together even closer in a very public way.

[Warren Sukernek]

A couple of others I would add:

- Taking notes during the presentation not only helps me to keep focused on the speaker, but also engage in dialog with people not at the conference. I've strengthened twitter relationships and attracted new followers via my note taking.

- Company's and speakers can use twitter to attract audience to their booth, session or other event via actively engaging the conference audience and being found via hashtags. They can then engage in conversation and get instantaneous feedback. I foresee the use of "popup" twitter accounts to do this.

[Rachel Happe]

Great additions Warren & Doug - thank you! The voting with you feet is a really interesting by-product and one I saw in the Lockheed Martin presentation. It definitely allowed a few people to join a presentation that everyone was talking about, both before and after.

[Dave Atkins]

I used twitter to microblog our town meeting a few months ago: http://twitter.com/westwoodtownmtg I only thought of doing it a couple days before, so it did not turn into a real "backchannel" but by putting the twitter updates feed on my town blog at http://westwoodblog.org I know that a few people did follow along during the meeting. I think there is a ton of potential here; I've only scratched the surface this year with podcasts of selectman candidates, guest blogging by people in town (although http://mydedham.org puts me to shame with their level of activism in neighboring Dedham). But the adoption level has been lower and slower than I hoped--my local efforts at a wiki (see http://tinyurl.com/4t5sxq ) haven't really panned out. But I think, with a lot of optimism, we can use social media to connect a lot of folks who would otherwise not participate.

[Ralph Soule]

Rachel, I hope this does not come across as curmudgeonly, but wouldn't an alternative way to stay engaged in a conference topic be to take notes (especially if you wanted to share them later)? I would find it hard to listen to the speaker and later share key points the speaker made if I was spending much time "add[ing] my perspective" either via a cell phone to Twitter or talking to my neighbor.