During the PASS keynote on Thursday something amazing happened. Just when I thought I already knew everything about Twitter, I was shown yet another facet of how it can operate. This year at PASS there were official live bloggers and I happened to know a few of them. I also happen to know they like to Tweet. So, while sitting in the front row, I decided to power up the laptop and tweet during the keynote.
Along the way, something magical happened. No, I am not referring to Donald Farmer walking out on stage with wings, because that happened the day before. What I am referring to is that the keynote itself was enhanced by the tweets.
Think about that for a minute. This live presentation, being given to over a thousand people, happening thirty feet in front of me, was enhanced by tweets coming in from the audience. How is that possible? Well, let me try to explain how it all happened. First, while the talk was going on, someone would drop a tweet about a particular statement, such as when the speaker said “security is not important”. A handful of tweets go out, I could read them, tweet something back if I wanted, and then go back to paying attention to the speech.
You might say to yourself that I cannot do both things at once. And to some degree you are right, but I believe it is more accurate to say that I cannot do both things well at the same time. However, after years of practicing CPA (continuous partial attention) with my Blackberry, I have gotten good at being able to carry on two conversations at once. What made this even easier was that the two conversations were tied together. At that point I likened this experience to the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 show from Comedy Central. Essentially, there was a show going on and we were talking about it while it was happening.
Still not enough for you to be excited about Twitter? Okay then, here comes the best part. One of the members of the audience was not actually in the audience. They were in the green room, getting ready to go on stage. Donald Farmer was about to come on stage and he was participating in the conversation with the audience, getting feedback on what we liked, what we wanted to see, and what we did not care to see. So, in the moments leading up to his time on stage, he had the opportunity to address all the things we wanted to hear about. Unfortunately he was locked into giving a demo, but if he had his laptop he might have been able to show us some different items.
How cool is that? We were able to provide valuable feedback for the presentation that they can take back with them. They also had the chance to change their talk as it was happening. When giving talks to smaller groups you could ask the audience for feedback as you went, but a keynote is a different animal.
I was also on the receiving end of this experience. On Thursday morning I was taking part in a breakfast panel sponsored by Quest Software. My friend Pat Wright sent me a direct message in Twitter to tell me to speak into the microphone. Yeah, that’s right, while taking part in the panel I was tweeting, as was Brent Ozar who was sitting right next to me. We were interacting with the audience, which included Andy Leonard as well.
That does it, I am adding a Social Networking category and tags to this blog.
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