I am currently attending the Association of College and University Housing Officers International (ACUHO-I) annual conference in Seattle, Washington. I was particularly interested in the article about the use of Twitter before, during, and after professional organization conferences. According to Dennen (2009), conference tweets tend to give a feel for the conference and are entertaining to read more than they share specific information. While this may be the case, it may be worthwhile for organizations to rethink the use of Twitter as a meaningful tool to share content that could be beneficial for those members not able to attend the conference.
The biggest issue with one general conference hashtag is the ability for substantive information to get lost among the social and commentary tweets that typically pop up during conferences. If professional organizations want to be intentional about information sharing, it will be important to make sure attendees know the appropriate hashtags to use and constant marketing of the hashtag throughout the conference. Many professional organizations have subcommittees and knowledge communities that sponsor specific presentations during a conference. This presents a great opportunity for these specific subsets to create and promote a specialized hashtag for those who might be looking for specific information before, during, and after the conference.
So what's happening on the twitter feed at your conference? Who is using it, and how?
ReplyDeleteTwitter is definitely being used at this conference. Many people are posting quotes from presentations and pictures from powerpoint during presentations. So there is some content being shared. However, there are also many posts of pictures of delegates or them expressing their feelings at the conference. I am definitely paying much more attention the conference Twitter feed than I probably would have in the past.
ReplyDeleteI somewhat agree with your idea, Chandra. I've attended some academic conferences using Twitter at that time. I found that many of the related Tweets were just like commentary and/or about their general feeling. But it was something not that bad. It was my first attendance, so I wanted to explore what happened in the conference. Seeing the tweets was a good way to briefly see what happended there simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteLove seeing you on Twitter more! Conferences is when my Twitter feed goes nuts and I tweet more. It's great for networking! -Maritza
ReplyDeleteLove seeing you on Twitter more! Conferences is when my Twitter feed goes nuts and I tweet more. It's great for networking! -Maritza
ReplyDelete