Rosetta Stone for Twitter
What Twitter needs is a version of Rosetta Stone for those of us trying to learn to speak the language.
I have been investing some time recently experimenting with Twitter during live educational events, trying to learn by doing what value the technology can add to the learning experience. I have found that the Twitter traffic during a seminar tends to fall into two categories: there is the virtual equivalent of passing notes in class ("What was he thinking when he chose that tie?" "Where in the food court can I find a good steak and cheese sandwich for lunch?"); then there is the substantive: the serious effort to capture content so it can be shared with others (including those not physically present).
I've learned to just ignore the former as so much useless background noise and focus on the latter. It is utterly beyond me why anyone would waste their time and attention on the sometimes infantile chatter that fills the Twitters-sphere during a session. But it is going to go on anyway and getting annoyed by it just grants it permission to interfere with your own purposes. If you don't find it useful, don't get irritated: just ignore it.
Because your content-based attention to Twitter will be rewarded. I have found some of the tweets generated by others in the room during a conference or seminar really do capture insights from the program in sometimes very compelling ways. I have, more than once, copied particularly brilliant tweets into my own notes from the seminar after the fact.
But as far as actually generating tweets during a conference, I am a complete failure. I am and always have been an obsessive note taker: even the most slender of seminar content is good for a page or two, or for a mind map. Taking notes helps me to focus on and capture the most pertinent takeaways from a session. But I find the effort needed to reduce an insight to 140 characters too distracting. The means (Twitter) interferes with the end (knowledge capture and transfer). I get too busy trying to find the shorthand to express the speaker's previous thought to follow what he or she is actually saying next. I fall behind. For me, composing and sending tweets alienates and removes me from the educational experience, rather than increasing my engagement in it.
Maybe it will be different for you. But for the time being, I will leave the real-time translation of educational content into Twitter to folks more fluent than me. And enjoy the fruits of their labor.
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Comments
Mark: You may then be happy to know that some studies have found people who Tweet during sessions have less content retention after the program.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | May 2, 2011 2:58 PM
I respectfully disagree. As one of the top tweeters at most every conference I attend I am far more engaged listening and tweeting than I am just listening. I am processing the information in a more deliberate manner to influence my work and the work of the hundreds of people who loyally follow me. I also use my tweets as post notes for reference.
Posted by: Holly Duckworth, CAE, CMP | May 3, 2011 2:23 PM
Great post, Mark! While I've found most other social media platforms to be at least adequate, if not superior to older e-community technologies, I have to admit I just don't get Twitter. It's an awkward place to troll for information and I'm mystified by folks who process information in a manner that includes instant rebroadcasting. If it's a good speaker I'm taking notes and focused on them; if it's not, I generally leave the room. Different strokes for different folks, but nice to hear someone else who has less than unbridled enthusiasm for the platform.
Posted by: Kevin Whorton | May 4, 2011 8:19 AM
I rarely take notes - I like listening to speakers. When I do write, it's not to record what the speaker says but to create something triggered by the speaker's comments.
And I like to think about something before sharing it. Immediate reactions are often half-baked.
Twitter may work for a lot of people, but when I present, I'm not interested in anybody's Tweets. If you've got something to say, say it - if it's relevant - and keep it to yourself if it isn't.
Just because you have the technological ability to share thoughts instantly, doesn't mean you should.
Posted by: David M. Patt, CAE | May 4, 2011 12:16 PM
I took a ton of notes AND tweeted recently at MMCC and Springtime. I took notes on the things that would be relevant to me professionally, and mostly tweeted the broader-scale takeaways that I thought should be shared with those not attending the sessions. I'm glad other people did the same -- it helped me to learn from sessions I could not attend!
Posted by: Lauren Hefner | May 4, 2011 3:08 PM
I had a similar experience at first, Mark. I had my own process for taking notes, and I found trying to do it in Twitter frustrating. Now I end up doing both, one form more than the other depending on the speaker or even my mood. I have actually come to the point where I find the artificial constraint of 140 characters to be a positive thing (like the form constraint of a haiku, though I may be stretching that point a bit). I end up forcing myself to distill what I'm listening to, to the point where I can provide insight in very few words. Sometimes it really works. LIke most of social media, there's no rule book that tells you how to do it or what works. It comes out through practice.
Posted by: Jamie Notter | May 4, 2011 9:47 PM
Hi Mark, Thank you for your this post; it resonates with some of the thoughts and feelings I've had since MMCC. I am ambivalent about twitter. When I embrace it at conferences, I enjoy the sense of community it creates and the ability to learn from those tweeting from other sessions. I also enjoy tweeting messages of my own and retweeting those of others. However, like you I sometimes lose focus while typing a tweet and then have to catch myself up. I tend to tweet from my phone, and I think it may be more natural and less distracting to type the tweets onto a laptop instead, so I plan to try that at the next conference I attend.
Posted by: Lindsey Pabst | May 6, 2011 4:09 PM