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Conference Twittering v. Blogging

   June 16th, 2009

twitter logoA quick recap of my experiment to both twitter and blog the CMS Day workshop last week: I didn't like it.

And interestingly, while catching up with rss that night, I read Librarian by Day very nicely summing up everything I didn't like about it.

Blogging a conference is how I take notes for myself during the sessions - I don't know if it's helpful to anyone else, but it is to me, and I put it out there just in case someone else is curious. But twittering a conference ultimately felt like a series of inside jokes that only people at the conference would get.

Don't get me wrong - the conference was great, which is why I was trying to share it. So perhaps it is my lack of tweet skills, but it didn't seem that 140 characters, without the context of the conference, is very helpful (other than a laugh or two).

I'm still new to this, so forgive me if this observation has already been made: it occurred to me that twittering is the metadata of life. I can describe the conference or what I'm doing at any random moment, but it's still just a description of something else. Metadata absolutely serves a purpose, but when it comes to conferences, maybe the most useful tweets are those that point to resources available elsewhere (or that are humorous one-liners).

Or, perhaps more likely, I'm just doing it wrong.




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2 Responses to “Conference Twittering v. Blogging”

  1. Winnie Says:

    I agree that blogging is better. Those in attendance might have appreciated your comments on what was happening at the moment, but I wasn’t there and the notes on Twitter made absolutely no sense.

  2. Bobbi Newman Says:

    Thanks for posting this, at least I know one other person feels the same way 😉 I have some really mixed feelings about Twitter, sometimes it seems like a popularity contest rather than a tool for disseminating useful information or connecting with friends and colleagues.