Social networking tools at a conference

I think one of the best ways to demonstrate the power of Internet-based social networking tools is at a conference.  For example:

• Use a wiki to collaborate on information everyone needs to know about the event (all of the "unofficial stuff").
• Use blogs to disseminate notes about sessions and other events. For the blogger, writing about a session can help the person remember what she heard and retain more of the information.  Having it in a blog makes it easier to retrieve.  (And if your handwriting is like mine, the blog post is much easier to read!)  For others, the blog posts may contain information about sessions that could not be attended.
• Short messaging services (e.g., Twitter via an Internet enabled device) allow people to keep in contact with each other.  This allows for people to coordinate activities, know what's hot (and what's not), and share tidbits in real time.
• Photo-sharing services allow for people to communicate in pictures rather than words.  And as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words!  At Internet Librarian, one person took photos of presentations, rather than blogging.  Photos also provide visual documentation that we all can relate to.

Thinking of Internet Librarian, I have two fun stories that will help to illustrate. First...I used Twitter during the conference, although not all the time.  On Sunday afternoon, I twittered that I was at Cafe Noir drinking coffee and using their wifi.  Later that day, someone said she had seen that I was at Cafe Noir and wished she could have been there too.  But I knew where she had been (via Twitter) and countered, "but you were listening to...!"  Okay...that seems frivolous, but we were able to quickly strike up a conversation because we knew what we had both been doing.  Instant rapport.

Second...on Wednesday evening, the flight from Monterey to San Francisco got canceled due to fog.  Although a group of us were able to rent a car and make our connecting flights in San Francisco, one person remarked that he would have "changed his status in Facebook" if we got stranded at the Monterey Airport and waited for someone to come to our rescue.  Go ahead...laugh...however, it would have worked.  And placing something on Twitter would have also ensured all of us warm places to sleep for the night.  Of course, these tools don't work unless someone is "reading" and we knew that people were.

You want a more serious example? There are 197 blog posts indexed in Technorati that relate the conference.  Want to know the good, the bad and the ugly of the conference?  The blog posts will tell you!  There are also more than 2,000 photos in Flickr tagged with "IL2007".  What to see what it all looked like?  The photos tell all.

If you're not using a lot of social networking tools now, consider them for your next conference.  Who knows, you may know more, do more, and be connected more.

Comments

[Christina Pikas]

Right - so this is why people organizing conferences absolutely must make an effort to provide good wireless access! Blogging conferences doesn't prevent people from coming, it just makes them more likely to come next year.

[Deeps]

Conferences using social tools, like Wiki, and a network, would be a value for the first timers, and the repeat attendees. This should in turn drive the ROI for the event producer.