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Using Twitter at a conference

I attended yesterday at the conference Atelier.fr on "Twitter in France: Is your company prepared? " (transparency of the conference is online and the study "Twitter in France" ).

As with any conference now, the "official hashtag" of the conference was given at the beginning by the organizers. It was # twitterstudy . But what is a "hashtag"? What is the point? What are the implications of Twitter at a conference?

Note: find the Twitter discussions of the conference of the Workshop on Twazzup .

What is a "hashtag"?

Here is the definition of the hashtag given in the article Understanding and Using Twitter for "Chronicles of the Real Time Web":

• Hashtag: by placing a hashtag (a # and a set of letters without spaces) you create a thread from a given subject. Indeed, if your hashtag is included in various tweets on the same subject, it is then possible to find all these messages by the search engine Search Twitter for example.

What is the point?

Each hashtag is specific to a subject (example: # webtr for all messages on the "Web Real Time") or is attached to an event (examples: # G9 for the conference G9 + on social networks or # LeWeb for the conference LeWeb'09 ).

The hashtag allows those interested in the subject or event can be followed (real time) or trace (offset in time) all messages sent to the container. This is a news feed in succession and then an access code to Web archives.

It allows any person physically present or not to follow discussions and participate.

Software search Twitter messages containing a hashtag is of course necessary. The best known is the search engine for Twitter (most basic) but there are others with additional features like Twazzup (highlighted Twitter accounts, tweets popular shared links ...).

Note: see more services in Article Twitter Services, Twitter tools and applications of the "Chronicles of the Real Time Web".

What are the implications of Twitter at a conference?

Those attending a conference fall into two categories: those who take notes and those who do not take. In the first category can be divided into those whose scores do not reserviront or are unusable (incomprehensible, unreadable ...) take care of those who classify or even to get in shape (small portion). And in this subcategory, few share their notes (via email, on a social network ...) and thus will value thanks to feedback from others.

In simplified terms, we can say that taking notes "classical" conference (on paper, in a software text) is underused and not valued in part because not shared.

If you replace it with note taking via your Twitter account, you get:

• Sharing: sharing your information and your thoughts on the conference and you are therefore likely to have feedback from others.
• Archive: automatically you check your notes on the Web for you and for others.
• Interaction: you interact in real time with attendees at the conference and those that are remote.
• Promotion: you are no longer a participant but an actor in the conference.
• Meeting: you often encounter at the end of the conference people like you who have sent messages on Twitter (a phenomenon of mutual recognition: you tweet, I tweet, therefore we have something in common).
• Influence: you allow the player to react in real time questions / comments that are sent to Twitter (often, Twitter messages are projected into the room).

In contrast to these positive points, there is also the risk of loss of attention while writing the Twitter message and loss of down.

We must therefore know how to alternate writing and listening but my personal experience is that to send messages on Twitter during a conference (and about the conference requires intellectual agility boosting your overall listening and you do not let it slip your attention to express your thoughts at the time (especially after lunch ...).