Forrester conference and Twitter: Does live tweeting help engage conference delegates?

Does live tweeting add value to your conference experience or is it just another distraction?
Will tomorrow’s conference require us to check in the gun – pardon mobile devices to assure that the audience stays focused?
Some have argued that all this microblogging is helping us to become less effective

In the past we believed that having coffee (tea if you prefer) together may help collaboration, networking, and cross-fertilization. These days many of us spend enormous time online with such tools as Twitter. In fact, your boss might be wondering right now, why you did not join the conversation around the coffee machine. Of course, reason was that you tried to stay connected reading various tweets during your break instead of talking to your colleagues.

Incidentally, Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time. Some experts also describe it as kind of a micro blogging platform that allows you to publish short messages. For us in Europe, the 140 characters limit it imposes on your writing is similar to writing an SMS on our mobile phones. However, the difference is that one can use Twitter through the web, instant messaging or one’s mobile phone. As well, depending on how many follow you, your message could reach thousands of people in an instant.

Conference delegates using Twitter

Recently, ever more conferences offer delegates the opportunity to use an instant messaging system, such as Twitter whilst listening to presentations.

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Jeremiah Owyang. In fact, he is one of my “favourites” because in some of his tweets he shares links to some interesting material I appreciate getting to look at. Recently his employer, a US consulting firm, had a two-day conference entitled:

2008-04-09 – Forrester Marketing Conference Day 2: Understanding Your Customers through Engagement

I got curious, when Jeremiah sent this tweet:
jowyang Who else is live tweeting the event? @nickhuhn @Rumford and watch the aggregation here http://tinyurl.com/6cd27o

Therefore, I analyzed the tweets from the 2-day conference. Particularly, I tried to figure what was happening whilst watching the online feed offered during this conference.

For starters, I felt many people took advantage of the opportunity to tweet about the conference. Interestingly enough, some tweets had little or nothing to do with the presentation that was happening right at the time in the room they sat in.

Twitter gave people following the conference through the video feed the opportunity to participate. For instance, one could ask a question. In turn, somebody in the audience might pick it up and subsequently ask the presenter. That I thought was a great way to use Twitter.

Nevertheless, I dared to put up a post about the aggregate tweets I found from the conference here:

ComMetrics Searched Tweet Scan for: forrmarketing08 http://tinyurl.com/5jpxvg I am just not sure if this chatter adds any beef

I have gotten some interesting feedback from people about how they felt having everybody using Twitter while a presentation was going on. Most of the feedback raised the issue that people felt it was not easy to keep focusing on the presentation. In particular, they felt the technology distracted them from focusing on what was happening in the room itself.

Nonetheless, last night I went again through all the tweets from the conference. I found some real gems, such as:
Weave : The unspoken issue with engagemt is affinity. The idea is not to engage w/everyone, just folks with affinity 4 ur brand. #forrmarketing08

or

MichelleBB : How do you adjust for fact that delivery service buyer (price sensitive ) is very different from user (service oriented). #forrmarketing08

However, one had to look to find a few gems amongst many. Not all material was much on the topic. Not all posts contained special insights the writer was willing to share with us via Twitter.

Other messages were somewhat private. In turn, they did not improve ones comprehension of what was happening on the floor or what the presenter was trying to convey to the audience. One case illustrating this was this tweet:

adamcohen : downscope for the flight home to Boston, enjoy rest of Forrester conference Thank you @forrester @jowyang for hosting #forrmarketing08

Does Twitter improve your conference experience?

If you got 200 or more people in a room with wireless connectivity and an aggregate feed from a tool like Twitter, people will tweet away for sure.

The difficulty for both, delegates in the room and those watching the video stream from afar, is how to stay focused in-midst of all these attempts to stay ‘connected.’ For instance, personal messages go back and forth addressing such earth shaking issues as why somebody was happy or disappointed when getting his coffee at Starbuck’s upstairs (i.e. in the conference venue). I am not sure that we cared much sitting over here at night in front of our computers watching :-).

During these two days, tweets came in fast and furious. They did distract me from focusing on what the presenter was saying and what came in through the video stream.

I believe what delegates might have forgotten when they used Twitter to chat is that the ‘whole’ world was reading their messages or tweets. In short, yes, Twitter adds some value but one has to work hard to find the gems in-midst of all the chatter.

If you have a different opinion or a suggestion on how we can use Twitter more effectively at the next conference? Let us know, inquiring minds want to know. Until then I will continue to use Twitter only in instances where I have something to contribute to the conversation.

also of interest:
4 Lessons we can Learn from Mercedes-Benz, AOL and Wells Fargo	Google, Digg.com and Twitter: Why such Drive-By Traffic is of Little Value
Going Solo – Ropes to Skip	getting your corporate blog noticed – pretending not to care

PS.Apart from the fact that Twitter raises some serious InfoSec and privacy concerns (we will talk about these later), there are also some regulatory and compliance issues one should not forget when using Twitter (stay tuned – I will talk about them).

Tagged as: #forrmarketing08, aggregate Twitter feed, benchmarking software, benchmarking Twitter, ComMetrics.com, using Twitter more effectively