Last week I began talking about how conference organizers are using their websites to enhance the overall conference-going experience. Today I want to focus on the role micro-blogs like Twitter play in conference promotion and collaboration.
This year’s TED conference is in full swing this week. TED annually hosts a who’s-who of thinkers in education, economics, entertainment, politics, and technology. TED’s organizers are posting brief conference updates on their own Twitter account. Twitter makes it easy for attendees to quickly add their own thoughts on sessions by including a hash tag in their tweets. In this case, if I were attending TED and had something to share with the world via Twitter, I’d just include #TED in my message. People reading my tweets from a Twitter client like TweetDeck can click the hash tag and open a real-time list of tweets with that keyword. We could encourage Twitter fans attending this summer’s conference to include the hash tag #SIM2009, for example, to get a quick rundown of what people are saying about the activities there. (By the way, I’m leaning strongly toward doing a session on Twitter this summer, if you’re attending the conference and are interested in learning more about what it is and how we’ve been using it around CRL.)
Also of note: No, I’m not at TED right now. I wish I were. But I can still follow TED on Twitter, along with others who are attending and posting about the conference. Is it the same as being there? No, but I did hear some interesting information about Bill Gates’ presentation yesterday before it hit the traditional press or even blogs. Yes, it’s going to require a little more research–you’re not going to get a complete summary of a talk in 140 characters or less–but it’s great for marketing. Seeing all the great and enlightening discussions I’m missing this week, maybe I can somehow finagle my way into TED 2010 (wishful thinking).
So that’s how TED is using micro-blogging this year–they’ve put an established social networking system to use. South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) also uses Twitter; however, this week they also introduced my.SXSW, a social network exclusively for conference attendees and presenters. One feature of this service is a micro-blogging system akin to Twitter. It allows people to post messages, reply to others, and follow what others are saying. This is an interesting concept, but I haven’t really used it yet. At this point I think I’d rather use an open, established system for these types of communication rather than signing in somewhere else. I could be selling this idea short, though.
If we were to encourage micro-blogging before, during and after our conferences, I think Twitter would be the better way to go because, first, it’s there and not something we’d have to develop or host ourselves; and second, there’s value-added beyond just our single event–people can continue to use Twitter (or Facebook, or Flickr, or Delicious, etc.) for their own personal and professional uses after the conference is but a memory.
What do you think? I’m going to go on record right now and suggest we adopt #SIM2009 as a Twitter hash tag for this year’s International SIM Conference in Lawrence. Have you used micro-blogging to prepare for or follow a conference? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
