In the spirit of Chris Brogan‘s wonderful “workflow” posts that show how you can use social media in everyday life and work, here’s a simple “Event Attendee Workflow” for using Twitter to find out about, attend, share and make better connections at an event. This is around a local luncheon. I do a LOT more when it’s a conference or in a distant city.
- RECEIVE direct (private) message from a local friend inviting me to an interesting lunch.
- FOLLOW the link and decide it’s perfect for the Microjournalism panel I’m speaking on this weekend with Doc Searls and Robert Scoble.
- (PRE?)-TWEET about the event (I didn’t in this case, but usually do) to spread word, and possibly to discover that friends will be there/encourage them to go.
- TWEET on arrival Tweet a link to the live stream of the event or other “I’m here” message, preferably with useful content.
- SEARCH Twitter for tweets from other people in the room/related to the event.
- SHARE interesting comments, key ideas, links to resources discussed and the speaker’s site, etc.
- CONNECT to people you met there, as a low-key way to maintain loose ties and possibly get to know one another’s work and personality better.
What would you add?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
How about tweeting the names of those in attendence? Half shout-out and also helpful for those not following each other.
When tweeting an event, you should use a # hashtag. That helps when searching for a stream of tweets for an event or conference.
I always tell people to follow others live-tweeting an event, as there are always gaps in a single person’s coverage (at least when I do it I have gaps).
Fortune Brainstorm did a great job.
Promoted the twitter account in the emails about the conference.
Had weather updates pre-conference ie “Bring a Sweatshirt”
Traffic updates day of “watch out
Tweeted throughout with salient quotes from speakers. (Some friends actually used this as a time stamped transcript to edit their videos)
Post conference pointed to when videos, etc were available.
All and all I thought it was superb.
Matt
Oops… almost forgot… see for yourselves…
http://twitter.com/brainstormtech
This is a typical situation where we want to bring value to people via http://www.mixin.com, the social micro-agenda we’re building. Let me explain you how it would work in such a case. First you can directly create an (micro)event in mixin directly from twitter, just tweet “blogging, Journalism and reality @berkman conference room Cambridge Tuesday lunch” and mixin will automatically create an event in your agenda and send you back the link to it (we’ll do it via direct message soon). You can then tweet this link and people can join or watch this event on mixin. People can discuss in this specific context if they want but what is more interesting is during the event itself. At this time mixin collects automatically all tweets from people attending the micro-event and aggregates them in one dedicated place. This works also for Qik videos or Flickr pictures, everything is automatically aggregated by date. People can also add links, youtube video or other medias to complement the coverage if that’s needed. Non technical people can simply send an email to mixin with their related content in attachment. The objective is to have a place to have a filtered view on the content produced by attendees on other services during the event.
But to be honest, the first objective of mixin is not media aggregation but to help people organize social activities more easily. The idea is to let people share, discuss and decide activities with their friends in a simple way. We want to help people to hook up not only by sharing what they plan to do, but also by letting people also make propositions, share ideas or just let other know that they are available at a certain time. Think of twitter but future oriented, to let you see what’s going to happen or what could happen. E.g No plan for Saturday afternoon, free for lunch in Palo Alto today? let your friends know it and get back to you with cool suggestions.
Laura, guys, don’t hesitate to ask me if you want me to explain you more how I believe mixin can help in such situations. We’re building it for you.