Twittering at Conferences

I really missed the Edumedia Conference in Salzburg this year. I have pleasant memories of last year's conference and the beautiful city of Salzburg. Last year there were some great presentations, many productive conversations over coffee and I made several new friends with some really smart and knowledgeable professionals. This year's Edumedia Conference held in the idyllic Alpine surrounds of St Virgil, seems to have held some similar promise, and I avidly followed the tweets from those attending the conference. Although I wasn't physically present, I at least managed to get a flavour of the event, and saw some twitpics via Twitter.

My attention this morning was drawn in particular to a very relevant paper from the conference presented by Wolfgang Reinhardt (@wollepb), Martin Ebner (@mebner), Gunter Beham (@kamelg) and Cristina Costa (@cristinacost), entitled 'How people are using Twitter during Conferences'. The authors make some interesting points and attempt to summarise the uses of Twitter as essentially a backchannel for the reportage of live events. They make an interesting point that Twitter can be used for the fast exchange of thoughts and ideas as well as information exchange. They also warn about the distractive tendencies of microblogging and the potential for it to socially isolate some individuals. Here's the conclusion in full:

Microblogging at conferences seems to be an additional way of discussing presented topics and exchanging additional information. It is not limited to the face-to-face audience or the location of the conference. Microblogging rather allows virtually anyone to actively participate in the thematic debates. Our research shows that several conference speakers and attendees are using Twitter for various purposes. Communicating and sharing resources seem to be one of the most interesting and relevant ways in which one microblogs. Other microblogging practices in conferences include following parallel sessions that otherwise delegates would not have access to, and/or would not receive such visibility. Content attached to tweets was reported to be mostly limited to plain text and web links.

To further research on microblogging in conferences, we will have to work closely together with organizers of conferences as to better promote microblogging as an information channel directly associated with the event. Sending out links to the survey during or shortly after the conference seems to be a crucial point for later examination, as people have mostly filled out the surveys during the days of the conference.

Reference: Reinhardt, W., Ebner, M., Beham, G. and Costa, C. (2009) How People are using Twitter during Conferences. In V. Hornung-Prähauser and M. Luckmann (Eds.) Creativity and Innovation Competencies on the Web, Proceedings of the 5th EduMedia Conference, St Virgil Conference Centre, Salzburg, Austria. p. 145-156.

Link: Twitter as a conference backchannel (by Tony McNeill)

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