We have Twittered at conferences - including our own - for well over a year, but last week was the first time we have streamed a dedicated hashtag live onto the main stage of the event.
The #travsummit hashtag for the Travolution Summit 2009 worked brilliantly well in some respects.* As of this afternoon (Tuesday 28 April - one week after the event) there were close to 1,150 'Tweets' on #travsummit. At one point during the morning session the hashtag was 'trending' at number two across Twitter.
[This, forgetting the content for just a moment, is an awesome figure and admittedly was a bit of a surprise. Our publishing company Reed Business Information was suitably impressed and, rather embarrassingly for a humble chap like me, ran a gushing story to lead its intranet news service earlier this week]
* Approximately 200 of the Tweets were posted after the event.
[Now this is where it gets interesting. Post-event analysis and continuing the conversation was, until now, the Holy Grail of event organisers]
On the day we had the search.twitter.com page with the #travsummit feed appearing on the main stage's large screen during the Q&A sessions following each keynote.
We also had the feed running on smaller screens further back in the auditorium.
I encouraged - via email and Twitter - the assembled mainstream media and bloggers at the event to use the hashtag, in the usual fashion, to post their thoughts and questions to the speakers and other participants.
As the main moderator of the event, I observed a number of things during the sessions:* People were 're-tweeting' other people's posts almost as often as they were posting messages themselves.
* The feed was probably added to far quicker than people that were following it in the audience would want.
* If the on-stage content started to wane, people would Tweet *other* observations, such as comments regarding the panel's socks and footwear!
* The number of specific questions for panellists and keynoters far outweighed the number of comments, re-tweets, Twitpics, etc.
* A number of people suggested on the day the huge flurry of Tweets in the early stages (and later on when the US 'woke up') was almost as if people were ensuring that they were seen to be following the event. [Not sure, personally]
As I said in an email to the bloggers and media the following day, the day has now posed a number of interesting questions for me and our organising team within RBI as how to handle live streaming of Twitter at events.
* Should we create different hashtags for comments and speaker questions?
* Is there a case for a Twitter feed commentator, to coordinate the flow of the Tweets, as one contact who wasn't at the event suggested to me last week?
* Should we ask that delegates to stick to a particular form of Tweeting (keep it serious, for example) during the event.
* Do we pull the feed from the main screen if there is anything negative about the event or speakers? [We didn't last week - and, yes, there were a few comments]
* When there are a huge number of Tweets such as for #travsummit, is there a way of slicing and dicing the hashtag via the Twitter API so that people can understand how many individuals Tweeted, whether they RTed, @replied, posted links, Twitpics, etc? [We could do this manually, of course, but it would be a lengthy and dull task!]
* Is encouraging the use of Twitter at a conference impacting, conversely, on delegates who would ordinarily have blogged about the content? [A fellow conference organiser told me recently that his organisation felt that the quality of coverage suffered as a result of delegates spending their time Tweeting whereas in the past they might have been busily crafting more analytical coverage]
Background reading: a post on the Meetings Podcast outlined six ways to utilise Twitter at conferences, some of which are obvious but others are interesting and need further exploration:1 - Scheduling meeting ups.
2 - Alerting attendees about changes or events.
3 - Keeping track of what is going on at an event.
4 - Using it in your presentation to engage the audience.
5 - Building a brand of how cool your conference is for other watching through twitter.
6 - Real time performance review and feedback.
This is a fascinating subject in many respects but primarily, as a conference organiser, journalist and Twitter user, these issues create big challenges and opportunities for the way an extremely active and immediate channel like Twitter is handled at events.
Please feel free to add to the debate!!
As one of the people Tweeting on the day, I felt it went well. However, I personally would have found it difficult to report events as they occurred and at the same time offer an intelligent analysis.
I think there's an argument for having an official Twitterer whose task it is to report comments by the speakers to the outside world (this could be prepared in advance with the speaker?), thus freeing up the bloggers and journalists to add their own comments and intepretations.
When the travsummit topic started to trend on twitter, there were a few trolls that appeared in the search list. The danger of having the search feed live on the screen is if the twitter trolls start spouting a lot of stuff using the travsummit term just to get the attention of whoever is looking at it.
Admittedly, this was not too bad during the event, but I suspect that it may have been because of the timing (it stopped trending when the USA woke up).
I live tweeted Travelcom earlier this year and would have liked to see the twitter stream live and up on a screen to see what was happening, but I think that you need to be able to pull retweets out of the the stream.
As far as pulling out negative comments, NO. That is the whole point keeping it real and taking the good with the bad. It would only make things worse.
Travelcom had a moderator reviewing the questions from twitterers and asking them and I thought it worked better than walking around the room with a mic and it let people following the conference from other locations be involved in the discussion.
I think this is valuable and timely insight into the logistics of handling a twitter stream and the use of twitter at a conference.
I think there is a case to find a way to have a twitter feed moderator. We just got off a 5 day China Omega Golf Pro Tour event where we were credentialed media. Some of our interviews posted on twitter got segmented and in some ways jumbled about. I think Mark Hodson has a point in his comment about "offical twitter staff".
#journchat seems to have a good model for moderating and assisting people throughout their discussions.
I agree with Shane Keener that you shouldn't pull the negative comments but I think its part of the social media arena where its an opportunity to engage in dialogue. Show people how you handle the negative.
In regards to North American participation, I do think you need a dedicated resource to re-tweet highlights of the conference. Its a way to include them but not barage them with information.
Lastly, loving the fact that you are getting the post conference follow up so strongly. "Over 200 tweets" post conference is awsome!
Congrats and thanks for starting the discussion on "Best Practices" re: twitter and conferences.
You have to remember that not everyone has the same followers so if delegate A posts something interesting; its probable that my followers will not be following that person, so will miss it. That’s why I RT posts that I felt my followers would be interested in.
Maybe what needs to happen is that the hashtag is removed for RT?
I was surprised that there wasn’t a separate hash tag for questions, because it would have been impossible to get to the questions from the actual conversation.
Hi
I am one of the event organisers that ran the Summit for Travolution last week. Interested in the comments posted, particularly on the twitter feed moderator. Keen to improve our offering for all our conferences now that we have put our toe in the water! Has anyone been impressed with the feeds at any other events?
(First ever blog and so far it hasn't hurt a bit!)
I found twitter on the big screen immensely distracting... The question you need to ask is did it add anything to the debate in the room. If not, why project it? Apart from massaging egos... and contributing maybe 2 questions to the panel all day? what did it add?
Hi Kev,
I moderated the first meeting of Social Media Club Sydney on Monday night.
It was with some trepidation as the live tweet stream does leave you feeling a little vulnerable to critics! Happily all went well though.
In it's favour - it's good for making the audience feel involved, and for letting the shy ask questions.
Against - people can rush to judgement and one snap, but funny comment from an influential tweeter that gets retweeted can give a disproportionate impression.
But people are always going to tweet, and I think the visibility of a stream at least encourages courteous tweeting!
Cheers,
Tim - Mumbrella
As someone who tweeted from the Summit, I felt that there was a certain amount of competitive tweeting going on. Shout out to @travelrants for his one-man #travsummit trending initiative.
I'm not sure I see the value of having the feed projected onto the wall. Anyone who wanted to see the coverage could easily do so afterwards through @travolution's excellent post-summit coverage.
RTs should of course be allowed, although agree that removing the hashtag should be the etiquette.
Not sure I like the idea of an official Twitterer - sounds a bit like Pravda. The buzz of the feed was because there was no-one making the running or setting the rules. I want more on who is wearing the brightest socks not less.
I seem to remember at Phocuswright's conference in November that the screen with tweets/text messages came up at appropriate times during the individual sessions (during Q&A for example or whenever Philip told the tech to bring it up), but it was not on at all times. I liked the screen near the presenters (no neck-craning from side to side needed) but I agree the screen on full-time would be a distraction, especially during a one-on-one interview or a single-person presentation.
I followed the tweets from the Summit, and was annoyed by the redundancies, probably caused by 'competitive tweeting' as Mark says. But I don't see a useful way around that; all those people tweeting is the point after all, and one has to take the good with the bad.
Valyn: Just to clarify, as we said in the piece, we did not have the live feed on all the time, only during Q&As.
Thanks for the clarification, Kevin. That's what I get for not attending!
At PhoCusWright, we've utilized Twitter for two of our conferences and will obviously continue to do so, and will continue to improve the delivery of the feeds for the attendees and the "virtual attendees". We implemented a separate hash tag for questions during the sessions at PhoCusWright@ITB and that was successful. I'm surprised you didn't do that Kevin. I also want to devise a way to avoid the duplicate tweets. Yes, everyone wants to hit their followers, but those following the hash tags don't need to see the same comment over and over again. I can see a moderated feed (not to filter out negative comments) but to eliminate duplicates by only posting the first tweet on a specific topic. This will become an increasingly important part of our future conferences, so please send me any comments you may have on this topic as well as posting them here. Here's a post I made about this topic after observing #travsummit from afar last week.
http://www.phocuswright.com/library/fyi/608
Bruce Rosard
VP Sales and Marketing
PhoCusWright
brosard@phocuswright.com
Kev, can I ask a question with my 'old media' hat on? If someone tweets a libellous comment, say about a speaker for example, and you 'broadcast' it to all via your wall, don't you become the publisher and therefore liable?
"I felt that there was a certain amount of competitive tweeting going on"
I didn't feel that any competitive tweeting was going down. Like Mark, I don't like the idea of an official twitterer. I feel conversation, discussion should just flow.
What I like to add are my thoughts, questions, and bits of useful stats, and information. Interestly, despite tweeting like a maniac, I am not aware that I lost many (any) followers.
Re the socks, conferences are very businessy (obviously) but its good to add a bit of humour into the proceedings.
Neal:
An utterly untested area (so far).
However, we treat this as we do our online forums and act expeditiously in the event of being alerted to a possible libel occurring (i.e. remove the feed from our reproduction of it on the mainstage).
is twitter going to play a big part in the future of the travel industry? any thoughts? seems to get a lot of coverage on here ...
Matt:
It is certainly worth considering as a distribution channel and a means to engage with customers.
anyone doing it? did anyone get any joy out of fb or any of the other sites and successfully used them to sell holidays/flights/hotels? I am tempted to get on my soapbox and ask you give more space to real issues again :)
Matt, I understand Dell is using Twitter quite intelligently, but no idea if it's making them any money. Doubt anyone in the travel industry is, although there's plenty of "deals" posted. Has/will anyone make any money out of Twitter? Might be worth screen grabbing this thread for posterity just in case it goes the way of Second Life. Neal, one day the libel courts will have to work out how to deal with the Internet.
Lee:
I suppose what makes Twitter attractive to *some* travel companies is that it is one of the cheapest distribution channels available in terms of cost and effort, and therefore if just ONE sale is a result of a spending 30 seconds typing 140 characters then it might be worth.
You are absolutely right on the Second Life reference - the Twitter euphoria might be over sooner than you can say 'what's the next trendy social network'.
But in the meantime it is certainly worth considering as a distribution tool and conversation mechanism with customers.
On removing the more profane trolls: ITV recently broadcast a live twitter feed alongside early-evening show Primeval, so I'm sure there are ways of suppressing tweets that contain bad language. I imagine you could run the hashtag feed through Yahoo Pipes and get it to strip out entries with particular keywords in. Then create a widget using the YP feed and display that instead of a live twitter search.
They're some companies doing great things with Twitter and social media but it always comes down to return on investment.
Surely, its not all about generating revenue (not to me as a consumer anyway)
If I can go online and interact with companies and ask questions, then thats good. If airlines and travel companies are still using it 12 months on then they has to be some added benefit in the time spent?
I hate livetweeting at conferences because - usually I am not there.
I am the guy whose Twitter feed suddenly gets bogged down with hastagged crap.
At worst it's "ooh the coffee is good" at best it's some little sound byte that makes absolutely no sense at all to someone who is not there.
The fact that it makes no sense is not the concern of the at-conference Tweeter - despite their claim that they are tweeting for a wider audience there are actually tweeting for 2 reasons:
1) To say...look at me..I'm at the conference
2) To impress the peple at the conference who have already actually heard the words that are being tweeted.
In addition, considering the problems you have highlighted why not issues some suggested Twitter guidelines.
First off you can tentatively suggest that people set up a separate account that they can tweet from. Then "the folks back home" can opt in if they really want to follow.
Also suggest that "while live tweeting is great we'd love to have your much wider and deeper thoughts on what has been said". Why not blog rather than tweet and (somewhere) we will link to you and give greater prominence to your thoughts. That way the conversation actually goes on beyond the event and is a whole lot less disposable.
It also panders to the networking/ "look at me" mentality.
As largely a non-attender of events (I live and work in Cameroon) I am repeatedly told - why not filter out the hastags using tweetdeck if I don't want conference banality. But I do want to hear some..just not this inane noise and the live tweeting of snippets that are nothing more than out of context gibberish.
As regards hashtags I like the idea of #eventfun #eventthoughts #eventquestions I think that could work.
But inevitably - try to persuade people to save their thoughts for blogs. Try and provide an incentive...best blog post prize..or just high profile links etc.
I think there is a wider issue here..I think a lot of these conferences are a "jolly" (sorry). I admit to have attended but one such conference and was amazed at the laptop culture and the general lack of listening - there was plenty of conversation but it was about the food, the coffee etc.
No one wants to make these events less fun and less sociable but Twitter, is at best, a sign post. Maybe people have the confidence only to retweet someone else's thoughts but not the confidence to parade their own in blog form.
It would be a real achievement if you could instigate a culture change away from coffee tweets or abstract live tweeting and instead push it towards making real, thought out observations within the extra space provided by a blog.
I try to restrict my Twitter use at conferences to a mix of links to my (and others') blog posts on the topic, and meet-up organising, for most of the reasons you cite here. Flooding your Twitter stream with conference stuff irritates more people than It helps, I think
Fascinating post, and I plan to link to it on our blog now - the live-Tweet debate has been going in our own Twitter circle for @journalismnews (@journalism_live for live coverage). I've no experience of travel events, but we cover media events, and spend our time blogging, live tweeting and writing news articles. It's difficult to know how best to prioritise. And I often wonder how effective, or sought, the tweeting is.
Two food for thought points caught my eye:
1. This buried in square brackets:
2. and the old media Q (although I don't think it's an old media Q) from Neal Baldwin:
Finally, my thoughts on an 'official Twitterer', Mark Hodson's suggestion. Perhaps fine for very factual reporting, but you'd lose something in the commentary and opinion that makes Twitter spontaneous and provocative to follow.
ah, just re-read Mark's point and realise he was saying an official Twitterer would be a complementary, rather than a replacement service. That would be useful, I think, but best tweets always come from the panels and the Q&A rather than the main pre-prepared speech. Also choosing which tweets to put out is still part of an editorial process.
What a wonderful Conferencing and Events, and thank you for running such a great contest!
We're developing a custom short link system that allows destinations to create their own, memorable links to local partners. During this process we've been tracking the conference space very closely, starting with analyzing Twitter patterns during conferences as well as data mining tools.
Here's a Google spreadsheet to the recent TravPRSA conference:
http://go.connectme360.com/travprsa
and here is an IBM-powered interface to rapidly find wisdom in all of those tweets. Just type in a keyword and the system will help you browse all related tweets:
http://go.connectme360.com/travprsameme