It’s now well-established that digital back channels in conferences make for some of the most interesting idea sharing forums, and they act as an in-session mechanism for business networking. Rather than being forced to introduce yourself to complete strangers while also juggling a plate of buffet food over lunch, and trying to reach into your pocket for your business cards, while determining whether the person you’re speaking to is actually going to be a useful contact; digital idea sharing in conversation backchannels allows you to engage with the content of a conference, share ideas with equal voice and make connections that have longevity beyond the framework of the event. And as backchannels tend to happen in real time (’live’), they can be a useful means for presenters to stay on track with their audiences, and to respond to queries as they arise, without disrupting the natural flow of a session. Increasingly, conference organizers are permitting these backchannels to be screened to all the participants in a conference on a separate screen. So even those who choose not to engage with the backchannel can at least have the opportunity of following up on ideas in a manner not previously possible, particularly if hyperlinks are included to documentation or examples that illustrate the content of a conference session.
Until recently however, the manner in which a twitter backchannel could be displayed posed a problem for conference crews. Even if a conference had had the foresight to determine which hashtag(#) to use on tweets about an event, there was always a need to refresh pages on search.twitter.com as new posts arose. It’s clumsy and doesn’t give a sense of issues arising as they are posted by participants. And in an event where someone on stage actually poses a question to an audience, the delay in aggregating responses through the twitter channel makes the feasibilty of using search.twitter.com on screen rather limited.
But then along came Twitterfall. Based on a Javascript interface, Twitterfall can be set to follow specific keywords or hashtags and updates live every few seconds, with new posts auto-updating as they are posted. As an interactive feed, it’s superb for conference organizers, because management of the channel is essentially a “set and forget” process. The color scheme of the interface can be set appropriately, given the lighting at the venue, and the side-panels which allow customization of the manner in which posts appear can be hidden from view, so that only the twitter content is available.
I know many people use Twitterfall to follow ‘hot trends’ on twitter, but it is really in mass viewing at conferences where Twitterfall comes into its own. Where TweetDeck may be more valuable at tracking a range of content streams, Twitterfall is particularly good at presenting a single stream of ideas, and delivering a sense of the event ‘as it happens’.
If conference organizers want to get maximum value out of digital backchannels it’s always important to consider the interaction design of the channel. And at conferences, you want to enable idea sharing, focus on the content of the event, and maximize interaction between what’s happening on stage and what questions attendees may have. Of the tools currently available for displaying live twitter feeds, Twitterfall is the most efficient tool out there.
March 26th, 2009
Available at http://www.TwitPic.com
TwitPic is very cool website that let you share photos on twitter. A lot of Twitter clients have support for TwitPic built right into them like TweetDeck. We will focus on how to use TwitPic via their web interface. You log into TwitPic using your Twitter username and password. You then upload an image you wish to share with your tworld (twitter world). Assign some tags or keywords for the photos that will help people find this image when searching and where the photo was taken. Also there is an option to have a message with your picture and auto-post the tweet to your account. Then hit the “Post It” button and you are done. It is really that simple, and if you clicked the tweet option, your message with the TwitPic URL is sent to your Twitter account.
There are a couple other cool options with TwitPic. You can view the public timeline, like you can in Twitter and see everyone’s pictures. Also when someone views your photo, they can leave comments and view your past photos. Everything is linked right to your twitter account. TwitPic also has some privacy settings that allow you to use your phone to send in TwitPics, and an option to remove yourself from the public timeline.
March 8th, 2009
Available at http://www.TweetDeck.com
The first thing that happens once you start expanding your Twitter network; it becomes overwhelming communicating with all your tweople (people). You login to Twitter, and you have hundreds (or thousands) of people in your stream. Some of those people you communicate with often, others rarely or not at all. Everything is in the same “main” stream, with no filtering, which makes for a difficult time to look through everyones’ tweets.
TweetDeck is the perfect tool that helps break down twitter into manageable, smaller pieces, and best of all its free. Just like when you are getting hundreds of emails every day, you need to prioritize which ones you are actually going to reply too, which you will forward to friends and which you will delete or ignore. TweetDeck allows just this by filtering based upon groups. For example you can have one group for all of your twitter friends (main stream), another group for your VIP people, and another group for family and friends. You can categorize your groups however you please, but the beauty is now you have different streams with different importance. Also very important, is the fact that you have a group for all tweets that are replies to you or reference your @name in the tweet, and another group for all direct messages.
Here is an image of TweetDeck and notice how each group is displayed in a separate column or stream, keeping things manageable.
This makes it a hundred times easier to respond and interact with the people that are important to you on twitter, as well as those that you are trying to build a relationship with, not just the random passerby. Once you start using TweetDeck and have it set-up to your preferences, it will be very difficult to go back and use the standard interface available by Twitter. Even with your already filtered groups, you can then filter even further, based upon time, username, etc.
Besides being able to create groups to your heart’s desire and filter your main twitter stream, there is a lot more useful functionality in TweetDeck. Since we all know that we can only have a 140 characters per tweet, we need to save as many characters as possible when posting tweets. The easiest way to this is shortening URLs that are included in a tweet. TweetDeck has interfaces into a couple of these free services and lets you shorten a URL before you post it into your tweet. Also is the ability to upload images right form your computer and post a TwitPic into your tweet. Another cool feature is the ability to shorten your tweet, meaning it will take words like “too” and convert them into “2” and so forth, like you would when “u txt msg some1”. Another neat feature is the ability to translate your tweets into another language.
When you hover over your friend’s name, there are also a bunch of options. You can follow and unfollow that person, reply, retweet, add to a group, direct message and view that person’s profile(which can be done without going to an internet browser), as well as plethora of other options! By now you should be starting to see some of the power that TweetDeck gives you
The options are really very abundant. You can change color and fonts and all of the other aesthetics to make TweetDeck pleasing to your personal style. A search function and advanced options are available to determine how TweetDeck uses the API calls and other technical mumbo jumbo. I would recommend learning the functionality as need be. Start with separating your main stream into groups. As you start tweeting, most of the functionality is self explanatory and will be easy for you to figure out on your own. I have talked to a number of Twitter power users, and they all use TweetDeck. Just like anything else TweetDeck is evolving, as more ways to use twitter become uncovered, more functions get added, I believe I have already seen 3 or 4 updates since I started using TweetDeck.
March 5th, 2009
