Tech For Free!

This is the sixth article in my series on how I was able to capture the backchannel from non-techies.

One tool you can expect to be used to help capture what’s happening at any event is Twitter, and the National Leadership SpecialQuest (NLSQ) was no exception. Unfortunately, most NLSQ particpants were not users of Twitter, and few iReporters had existing accounts. With this in mind I got a little creative, but kept it simple.

While use of Twitter itself is quite basic, to truly understand how it works and how it’s possible to share great info in only 140 characters takes some practice. That said, I only enlisted iReporters to tweet if they had an existing account and some prior experience in using Twitter. To ensure that everyone could view what was being tweeted, I pulled all of the iReporter tweets into the NLSQ blog (iReporters tagged their tweets with #SQ10), which we made available to all participants through an internet cafe we setup for the event. You may want to read “WordPress P2 Theme to Capture Backchannel” for details surrounding how I pulled tweets into the blog.

In addition to displaying tweets through the blog, I also utilized a free web-based tool called “Visible Tweets”, which allows you to display tweets in a fun and visually pleasing manner using Twitter search operators. Instead of simply displaying tweets with Visible Tweets on a computer, it was displayed on (3) 42in flat screen TVs, which were strategically placed in high traffic areas of the event so participants  could see tweets as they were happening.

Admittedly, we had hoped to see a higher volume in Tweets from our iReporters so when I noticed tweet volume was low, I became worried. Fortunately, our use of Visible Tweets on the large TVs served us in a way that I hadn’t imagined. Of course, I was hoping to draw attention to tweets being made with the big TVs, but that hope was tied up with the idea of constant “gems of information and aha moments” flowing across the screen.  As it turns out, the real value in using Visible Tweets with the large TVs was that it was a constant reminder that this event was being “recorded” by this team of iReporters. In short, it was a buzz generator.

Overall I feel our use of Twitter with Visible Tweets was a success because of the buzz it created; however, in considering all aspects of the iReporting plan, I feel Twitter was an underutilized tool. Stay tuned for my final iReporter posting, which will contain my “hindsight is 20/20 list”, which will include details surrounding what I would do different with regard to using Twitter at a similar type of event.