Ways to make money

I've been in the audience for half a dozen presentations with a live twitter feed on a 2nd screen, but I recently gave my first presentation where there was a live twitter feed, so I thought I'd share my perspective as both from the audience and presenter perspective

Here's the presentation I gave “Outlook vs Twitter: who wins the war inside the enterprise?” (http://bit.ly/3ueiMq)

Advantages as an audience participant

+ I can participate in a presentation/discussion without being in the room with #hashtags
+ I can ask a question at the point of inspiration rather than wait until the end
+ I can add to or build on another person's comment so it's not just a 1 to 1 interaction but 1 to many
+ I can see whether the audience is reacting the same way I am to the presentation (bored? focused on piece of the presentation, etc)

Disadvantages as an audience participant
- Some twitterati can flood and dominate the stream

Advantages as a presenter
+ I can gauge the level of interest in the audience
+ I can adjust my presentation in realtime (although this is a tough skill to master)
+ After the presentation I have a record of all the comments
+ Extending my reach beyond the room
+ Shows humility that you don't know it all. As Socrates paradoxically said “I know I know nothing”
+ If you ask the audience to retweet the questions that are most interesting to them you can do a better job of addressing your audience
+ As an advocate for the power of transparency and sharing as CEO of HeadMix (http://www.headmix.com/blog), the use of this medium reinforces my message

Disdvantages as a presenter
- Reading the twitter feed can be disruptive. Do I do it in real time, at specific breaks, at the end?
- Seeing people in the audience with their heads down and not being able to establish eye contact can be disturbing

In both cases, as a member of the audience and as a presenter, I feel the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. That's not to say it doesn't force you out of a comfort zone as presenter – it does – but the payoff is worth it.

My top 5 tips would be

1. Twitter feeds are best used for presentations that are image/idea heavy and data light (ie Lawrence Lessig/Dick Hardt style)
2. Advertise the #hashtag in advance and at the beginning of your presentation
3. Ask audience members to retweet the questions they see that they want you to answer
4. Wait until the end of your presentation to answer questions
5. Have a person dedicated to scanning the twitter feed and ask you the questions

http://headmix.com/blog/2009/04/11/outlook-vs-t...

I do feel, that Twitter can be harnessed in a valuable way both in the classroom and at conferences if done correctly. It would enhance the panels, if there a live screen featuring everyone's tweets (w/ panel hashtag) were included during the panel. Hopefully it would self-regulate and keep out the nonsense tweets such as “I don't like what @so-and-so is wearing.” Twitter is hardly anonymous and the community will retaliate. Additionally, people paid big money to go to SXSW and learn. I feel I would have learned a ton from the audience's thoughts and feel I'd still be able to concentrate on the panel itself.

Similarly in your class, it seems there were a lot of “nonsense” tweets. Had you included a live feed on the screen, perhaps they may have been more relevant to the discussion and enhanced the discussion.

Another reason I like using Twitter during conferences or class is because, for me, it is helpful to take notes of profound comments or quotes (as there were at SXSW). I did this during @garyvee's speech from my phone and tweeted as he was talking. It helped me absorb the information and went into my catalog of tweets immediately so I could reference them anytime. That surely has value for me and for others who were debating whether to come see @garyvee's keynote.

Similarly in your class, if I were to Tweet someone's comment and reference the person, they know they've made an impact on one person in the class. This day and age (unfortunately), we rarely approach the person to say, “your comment really made me think…”. We might say, “hey nice comment.” But tweeting their comment and referencing them… well, that SAYS something.