Have you ever had an audience comment loudly on what you were speaking about while you were actually speaking? I did this week, and I found the experience to be weird, invigorating and a little bit scary.
The scene was the New Marketing Boot Camp, a seminar I conducted with Chris Brogan and CrossTech Media. The group was the most tech-savvy I have addressed in some time. About a half-dozen of the members were using Twitter, the short-message microblogging service that inspires a fanatical following.
Sitting down after my presentation, I was able to call up search.twitter.com and read what people had been saying while I talked. Most of them simply summarized points I made, but a few added their opinions, and not all of those opinions were complimentary.
I can tell you that the act of presenting to a group that is actively talking about you requires new skills. Simply knowing that thoughts are being exchanged can be flustering; the tendency is to speak to the people in the room who you know are documenting your talk, hoping to get an inkling of what they’ll say. There’s also a certain ego-drive voyeurism that comes from this kind of instant feedback. I found myself wanting to hustle back to my computer to get the online evaluations of what I had just said!
There was a famous story at the South by Southwest Conference last March in which a keynote session was disrupted by negative Twitter messages from some members of the audience. In that case, the speakers were in the difficult position of having those comments actually scroll across a public screen while they were on stage. That was an extreme case, but an increasing number of events are incorporating Twitter conversations into the experience by encouraging attendees to share messages with each other using specific tags or keywords.
Like most new technology developments, there are both good and bad sides to this new form of instant feedback. On the positive side, speakers and conference organizers need as much audience reaction as they can get, and the sooner the better. Having recently waited six months to get audience evaluations from one presentation, I can tell you that the immediacy of the tweeted feedback was wonderful. I was able to use it to get a read quickly on the tech-savviness of the audience and adjust accordingly for the rest of the day. Hopefully, that was a good thing for everyone.
The major downside of this trend that I see is that real-time feedback from a small number of people can force a speaker to unintentionally focus on trying to please that vocal few. This is dangerous if the small but loud group isn’t representative of the majority of listeners. It’s human nature to fixate on criticism, and focusing on the comments of a few audience members can throw a presenter off track. The feedback is great, but keep it in perspective.
I’m telling you this because many of you work in the technology industry. You will soon find (if you haven’t already) that attendees to your meetings and events will use tools like Twitter to share their observations. Encourage this. Ask attendees to use Twitter’s hash function (#) to label their messages for your event. Use search.twitter.com to filter their comments and save the search query as an RSS feed so you can collect all this feedback in one stream or even display it on a public screen.
However, Twitter feeds aren’t a replacement for the tried-and-true tactics of feedback forms and post-conference surveys. Real-time impressions can be incomplete and misleading, so take them with a grain of salt. But seek all the feedback you can. Your presentation or event will only be better for it.
Paul Gillin is a writer, speaker and content marketing consultant specializing in technology and new media. He has been a technology journalist for 25 years. His next book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, will be published in October.
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That’s very interesting. I’m experimenting with twitter to see if I can grow a nitch of people who like to closly follow subjects. Many people like to post their stuff, but few like to organize their thoughts. This is not to sell out the intellectual giants that grace twitter.
I created an account for my dog. Now SnoopyAustad holds a following and they are starting to talk back in their best dogie talk. His life is updated based upon my observations.
I also started AngelsTalk and am interested to see how people use it. I find several people are getting involved and asking questions.
Both are just starting to get going.
Now for industry use, you are drawing correct conclusions. Questions could get bothersome as you are focused on a lecture, meeting, or even daily work.
Isolated thoughts exchanged can be time consuming and allow others to draw wrong conclusions. Little bits of information work in social circles; however, corporate speed and accuracy needs more communication.
I spent 28 years working for the ExxonMobil Corporation and my focus was in communications of corporate programs and policies.
I spent many hours absorbing material and the most important part of my job was to get quiet, think about what I heard and then sort through how to deliver the intent in manageable bites that the front line could absorb.
Sometimes twitter can pull you in so many directions that accuracy can be skewed just in answering social twits.
In addition, many twits get ignored; they flutter off in to twitter nowhere. I would hate to hear back from a colleague that he did not get the twit. At least with email, I can track who it was sent to and when they opened it.
Of course mentioning this probobly will start surveliance systems for social networking. “God forbid.”
I like your writing style. I’m looking at your web listing. it is an interesting endeavor.
Interesting point. We live in an ADD age and Twitter is kind of the ultimate ADD tool. The immediacy and responsiveness are great, but are we furthering the trend toward random, incomplete thinking? How much context can you provide in a stream of tweets?
Hmm…I would think that you’d want to take the real-time feedback into account and address the issues in your presentation. While you want a message to resonate as broadly as possible, if you’re an expert then you should be able to go wide *and* deep. E.g. this isn’t very different than fielding questions live during a webinar.
Hi Paul,
I’ve recently started trying to utilize Twitter to actually retrieve and store attendee feedback during conferences. In my personal opinion, I feel that the current speaker feedback process is fairly broken. As you noted, while feedback forms and audience surveys are useful, they can sometimes be very long in the return (what things could you have improved on in those six months?) and I know of at least one case in which they were lost completely.
I set up a bot on Twitter (@talkr) that people can actively message and it will keep track of the audience feedback. I’ve used it pretty successfully at Gnomedex (http://ratemytalk.com/cons/Gnomedex) and DjangoCon (http://ratemytalk.com/cons/DjangoCon) and hope to expand it in the near future so independent presenters can utilize it. The instant feedback is great as it captures the immediate pulse of the audience, but I will also provide a option for speakers to obtain more complete feedback that is captured and owned by them, not the conference organizers.
I’ve considered trying to scrape Twitter Search to find feedback, but as you’ve mentioned that is not always directly related to the presentation.
@talkr could be very useful for both speakers and conference organizers to capture that audience feedback in a meaningful and useful fashion not only to assist the speaker, but also to help track and improve their presentation style over time.
@talkr sounds quite innovative. Thanks for sharing your story!
I attended the New Marketing Bootcamp and “tweeted” about the event. I think the event was fantastic; a nice, small forum with great conversations. I think it was one of the best events I’ve attended in a long time. I learned a great deal from your presentations and will be on the look out for other events like it!
A few quick comments: Paul wrote “are we furthering the trend toward random, incomplete thinking?”
That’s a great question. I’ve found that Twitter has helped me do the exact opposite. I’ve found that using twitter actually helps keep my thoughts in check. I use twitter as an outlet for random thoughts and ideas that pop into my head throughout the day. Some are serious…. some are just silly little thoughts that need a place to go. I’ve found that my thinking is more concise… thanks, perhaps, to the 140 character limitation? I use hashtags to post items I want to call up at another time (like #quotes). Every conference I attend now, I use hashtags to comment and record my notes throughout the session. Yes, there are some instances where people can be pulled into “side conversations” on twitter in the midst of a presentation or event. Unfortunately, I think that’s going to be the nature of communications going forward. Managing these side conversations and instant feedback during events can be difficult – and should not distract from the original nature of the event. That’s going to be a tricky thing to do. I’ll be interested to see how conferences and events evolve to capture and integrate this additional, very dynamic element.
Looking forward to reading your new book! @stales
P.S. Twitter is my ritalin.
I like the comment about documenting your conference observations via Twitter and then assembling them later. People used to tell me to take a small notebook with me wherever I went to jot down ideas. It always sounded like a good idea and I never had the time. Now my cell phone and Twitter perform the same function!
Thanks so much for posting this. I’ve sat in the audience many times Twittering reactions to a presentation, and although I do a fair amount of speaking, I’ve yet to notice this phenomenon at a large scale during one of my own presentations. I’m guessing that’s going to change.
I want to think about this some more and figure out how best to embrace it. I’m not sure that it makes sense to use it as real-time feedback during the presentation. With a live audience, it seems like in-person interaction should trump microblogging. Maybe it’s different with a remote audience, however.
Anyway, lots of good stuff to ponder here.
I’m wondering if some people are using Twitter to avoid actually interacting with the speaker, asking questions or voicing opinions out in the open.
If people are using it to summarize and jot down ideas and impressions, that’s one thing. If people are using it as a cowardly way not to address the speaker in person but to make snarky comments online, I don’t see the benefit to anyone. The participant doesn’t fully engage with the presenter, and the presenter misses out on the opportunity to clarify issues with the participant.
Trying to follow tweets in real time during a presentation sounds like a nightmare to me! I can barely keep up when all I’m doing is reading Twitter.
We are increasingly living in an asynchronous world where face-to-face plays less of a role, as you point out. I wouldn’t say snarky comments are “cowardly.” For some people, it’s the only way they know how to express themselves. I think it’s incumbent upon anyone in a public role, even if it’s just speaking to a few people, to be able to absorb any commentary constructively, even if it hurts to hear it. The trick is not to let a few vocal fans or critics affect you disproportionately. I like the approach professional researchers take of throwing out the top 10% and bottom 10% of responses because they represent the extreme ends of opinion. If Twitter gives voice to those in the middle who wouldn’t ordinarily comment at all, then it provides a valuable service.
I also want to compliment Damon Cortesi on his earlier comment about using real-time text messaging for structured feedback. If someone can figure out how to collect quantitative research this way, they’ve got a great market opportunity awaiting them.
Hashtagging a Twitter conference is the online version of what Joi Ito called the “hecklebot” a few years ago.
The “hecklebot” idea is that people should be able to use technology to more effectively heckle at conferences. In Ito’s “hecklebot” proposal, he wanted IM heckles to appear over the speaker’s head on a monitor.
Why would this be helpful? Well, over time, twitter heckling might create better presentations!
Just reviewing your tweetstream right now is going to be enlightening, and provide valuable feedback that can make you a better presenter.
Much better than the “after conference evaluation.”
In fact, now that you know that your next speaking engagement may be heckled on Twitter — how will that impact your presentation?