Using Twitter for documenting WEF Davos

by Urs E. Gattiker on 2009/02/01 · 9 comments 1 views

in b why benchmark successes,c blogging - case studies,c corporate blogging,c micro-blogging Twitter,d business wef davos,white papers research

    Do you want to know what happened at the World Economic Forum (WEF)? Get a FREE, SEARCHABLE pdf file containing almost 600 Twitter tweets that document what happened during WEF, which finished today in Davos, Switzerland.

I have been tweeting about the World Economic Forum using microblogging platform Twitter to discuss and document the interesting sessions (live tweeting from presentations).

In addition, I have written several articles about WEF and posted them on this blog, including but not limited to:

Twitter has been described as something similar to the Human Narrative in real time. And yes, the Capitalisation is important .

    Twitter is not just a marketing tool, nor a place to get cool links to awesome videos and blog posts. It’s not even simply a place to organise a barbecue or be introduced to a potential client. Its primary purpose is to tell the Human Story, in 140-character paragraphs (Laurel Papworth, 2008-08-13).

With no more than 140 characters per tweet, Twitter is similar to sending or receiving an SMS/text-message with your mobile phone. In other posts, I have outlined how much one can gain from using Twitter during a conference, such as:

Tweeting during the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, Switzerland is a challenging task. To make things easier for readers, I decided to use headings to allow later searches while grouping tweets according to keywords and so on (see link further below to download file), such as:

    5 THOUGHTS multipolar world➡
    2 Solution to fight #Depressionomics ➡ A)
    #WEF REFLECTIONS What was NOT said:Jean-Claude Trichet ECB
    #WEF #Davos Prime Minister of Japan Taro Aso ➡ Schwab asks ➡
    #WEF #Davos➡ The Politics of #Water Session ➡
    #WEF #Davos ➡Fight Against #Protectionism Session ➡Kim Jong-Hoon ➡
    #security #Davos ➡ #risk #terrorism ➡ anti #WEF demonstration

As you can see, I used plenty of hashtags like #WEF and #Davos. The official hashtag was #Davos but many people used #WEF as well. Hashtags add additional context and metadata to tweets. These are part of the 140 characters at the poster’s disposal. A hashtag has the hash symbol # as a prefix to the hashtag itself.

Searchable Archive – free download
Here is a searchable pdf file that allows you to search all World Economic Forum WEFdavos tweets posted during this year’s Forum in Davos. This 60-page pdf (360 KB) allows you to find the information you might need, including plenty of hyperlinks to additional insider material:

World Economic Forum WEFdavos will continue to keep you posted about reports being published from WEF’s working groups and in preparation for WEF 2010, so please follow – thank you.
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Here’s what I’m suggesting for today. What is your take? Any comments about the circa 600 tweets? Please write a comment and share your important insights with us below.
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Tagged as: c micro-blogging Twitter, Davos, Desmond Tutu, doom and gloom, Jean Claude Trichet, nationalism, Prime Minister of Japan, protectionism, tweeting, WEF, WEFdavos, World Economic Forum

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  • http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/default.stm Tim Webber

    Urs

    Steady stream of “tweets” during Davos, very nice. Used the file to search, found a few nuggets.

    Thanks so much for sharing. See you next year.

  • http://www.joannejacobs.net/ Joanne Jacobs

    I actually think 600 tweets is quite low, considering the importance of the event. What was clear was that whilst the event itself was successful and Reuters staff in particular did a great job in capturing the candid opinions of delegates, it still felt like a predominantly ‘broadcast’ event, with the greatest interactive moment being captured in the storming out of the Turkish PM after a heated exchange with the Israeli President.

    There’s no doubt that twitter can facilitate wonderful exchanges, and there is the opportunity to mobilise twitter more successfully at future WEFs. But right now the level of engagement is limited. It was interesting that the Amplified team had a much more robust and interesting conversation by putting a webcam up in a public space and getting some social media enthusiasts who happened to be present at a weekly gathering to talk about their responses to the current economic crisis. This citizen-driven chat show called for questions from the community and allowed exploration of economic solutions more effectively than any of the mainstream media or twitter channels. It was promoted through twitter – that’s what drove the audience to the show – but participation was mediated by the chat show technology. Because the topic was so complex, twitter was better as a means to accessing participation, than as a medium for engagement.

    I applaud what ComMetrics has done here in collating tweets from Davos because within this collection there will be an opportunity for meaningful reflection. But twitter use has to mature before genuinely valuable twitter posts can increase in density. Right now there’s too much ‘noise’ in these 600 posts for there to be many thoughtful ideas to emerge.

    Just one last point: since the weekend, #uksnow has elicited nearly 6800 tweets (at Tuesday night). It says a lot that snow can be more productive as a twitter hashtag in terms of meaningful posts and new technology (see http://www.benmarsh.co.uk/snow/) than a forum which arguably has a significant impact on world trade and international economic policy, by a factor of 10:1.

  • Urs E. Gattiker

    Joanne & Tim

    Thanks for the comments. I really appreciate your feedback. Joanne let me just respond to some of the important issues you raise:

    1 – While this represents 600 tweets only, considering 4.5 days of WEF this means about 10 tweets every hour during the day when sessions happened. 10 tweets from one Twitter account World Economic Forum WEFdavos is quite a bit.

    2 – Related to a is that if you take all the tweets with hashtags #Davos #WEF #Davos09 and so forth, there were several thousands each day and #Davos was the number 1 hashtag used for several days (PS. this excludes all the tweets that used the word Davos but not hashtags).

    Considering the above information, there were probably a few more tweets about Davos than the snow in the UK. One reason possibly being that the UK snow was not that interesting to people far away.

    3 – You state that when Erdogan left (you say stormed) of the podium that you perceived this was a kind of ‘interactive moment.’

    Financial Times financialtimes: Erdogan storms out of Davos debate: The World Economic Forum summit was rocked by a diplomatic fracas as the Tur.. http://tinyurl.com/bf9mvc (expand)

    This above tweet and others raise a very important point. While twitter may be an important source for headline news, media does not always get it right. In fact, there are numerous tweets that point out that Erdogan was walking off stage and not storming.

    Nevertheless, a few wrong tweets from influential media and suddenly incorrect information becomes a newly constructed reality or truth. If that is not worrisome, I am not sure what is.

    The event raised a lot of chatter amongst Twitter users complaining about inaccurate reporting. For me what was amazing and revealing is how quick this inaccuracy spread via Twitter and was being accepted as truth. Amazing and not that good if we want accurate headline reporting via Twitter.

    But was that really interactive? I agree with you that sitting with a few friends in front of the TV watching this or being at the event itself will allow one to talk about it with others, much more interactive than Twitter? I am sure you agree – see below:

    Twitter: wake up and smell the coffee – have a conversation instead

    4 – You raise an important point about chat technology allowing participants to bring in their questions to the panels. Twitter can do this as well as some panellists showed by asking their followers to mail them questions.

    As well other conferences have demonstrated that Twitter or other microblogging tools can be used during the session to participate quite effectively:

    Forrester conference and Twitter – does live tweeting help engage conference delegates?

    5 – About the noise issue in the 600 tweets. I am not sure what you define as noise but the tweets are clearly following the principle of broadcasting, summarising, soundbites, links to further information, etc.

    You also disagree with Tim it seems who found a few valuable things. But I most certainly agree, doing 600 tweets under pressure listening, talking viewing and making each one count is a task I surely do not master at this point. But looking at the tweets I get from followers, most of us do not.

    Nevertheless, a few rotten fruit/tweets does not mean the whole harvest is lost. Pick out the wrotten pieces and focus on the gems is my motto.

    Thanks again to both of you for your helpful input and insightful feedback. I will try to do better in 2010 for sure. This feedback helps me a lot. Merci bien.

  • http://twitter.com/FlGulf Rob Mitchell

    Rob Mitchell FlGulf @WEFdavos D WEFdavos It was interesting following #Davos through Twitter. You got a real sense of the flow and what was happening. in reply to WEFdavos

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