I was fortunate enough to attend the National Digital Forum on Monday and Tuesday. It was my first time at the conference, and I found it a very good conference. I liked the size, and makeup of the delegates, meeting and talking to others from similar sectors to the library was eye opening. I will at some point write something more about the conference, but for this post I just wanted to reflect on Twitter. 🙂
To my chagrin, as a technical librarian, going to a digital conference, I was lacking in gizmo’s 😆 I didn’t even have a clunky old laptop to connect to the wi-fi. I missed it too, the ability to make notes, and more importantly connect to the whole sub level that flows under conference’s via Twitter. Twitter, while not giving you any real insight to the content of the conference, does give you an sense of what the delegates are thinking and how the conference is going. I also discovered, when I managed to borrow a netbook and hop onto Twitter for a while, that the process of Twittering helped me concentrate on the talk.
There were a number of conversations to be had about twitter including the idea that at future conferences your twitter profile [if you have one] should be printed on your name tag. Then when you meet some who you know only virtually, you will be able to make that instant connection.
Another conversation I had was about multiple twitter profiles. Should you have one for your personal life, and a separate one for your professional? Or if you have more than one online persona, even more. Me for example. I could have a separate one for my writing life, another one for my professional life, and a third for my personal life. I have had that debate with myself recently, and come to the conclusion, especially as I have now come out from behind the curtain of anonymity, that I only want one. After all what I tweet is me in my entirety. I feel that to try and compartmentalize your online presence is to try and hide part of who you are, which for me is not a good thing.
Think I would struggle with more than one identity! 🙂
NDF is great – hopefully I can get there next year, this year was just too much for me even though I was offered the opportunity. I agree with you about tweeting helping to concentrate – it does that for me too. I also enjoy the gems that other people throw into the mix from other sessions and the community feel that comes from seeing others tweet about the session you’re in. For some people it seems to be a distraction but I don’t find it so.
I’d agree with both of you about tweeting from conferences – it’s kinda like notetaking only better because you can only capture the essence or concept of an idea in 140 characters, you can’t do the ‘word for word’ thing.
It’s actually quite a skill, this 140 character thing!
As for the 2 identities (or more) I think I’d struggle too. I am mindful every time I tweet that it could be read by MPOW & I think that helps me stay focussed on the issue and not give in to tacky public ranting…
I do however, have 2 blogs, one professional & one private as I actively encourage my professional community (and prospective employers) to read my professional one, but don’t necessarily need them reading stuff about my family & kids.
#my2centsworth 🙂