Monday 14 February 2011

Event Tweeting


I've been thinking about our use of Tweeting during KIN Workshops. For some time, we have encouraged the twitterati present to tell us what they are thinking through an event hashtag. As organisers, we find it useful to look back at what contemporaneous chat was going on. However those who don't Tweet, or don't want to look at screens during presentations and discussions, are excluded or unaware of that particular channel.

Dextr allows you to have a very simple feed to display tweets, one at a time and writ large on a second screen, or as Russell Davies did, a projector. We could use Dextr to project on a wall to display these comments and even questions in real time and to everyone participating in the workshop.
Has anyone displayed Tweets at an event? Was it inclusive or a total distraction? What about for the speaker? Is this any different to the 'chat' channel during a webinar?

1 comment:

Barry Jones said...

My initial thought is that it could be interesting but then, after looking at the Russell Davies post, two things occurred to me:
1) Only about 5 people usually tweet at an event which means that seeing the same 5 people's comment come up all the time would feel more like having 5 hecklers than contemporaneous chat.
2) My gut feeling is that it has the potential to pander to an attention deficient population that cannot keep focus on a speaker who has put time and effort into engaging people. The idea of having a twitter feed alongside watching a film in Russell Davies' example appalls me.

Let's not forget what event twittering does best:

Allows simultaneous comment and discussion during natural breaks and then a continuation of that discussion.