twitter my timbers

The newest breed of networking is from the online micro-blogging sensation, Twitter.com. It’s a different take on organized chat rooms…. If you are interested in a great way to get involved in a weekly events and meetings’ chat room, why not try Twitter?
The barrier to entry is almost nonexistent if you have a computer and an internet connection.
Unfortunately, I missed last night’s eventprofs (event professionals) meetings networking event. But, I did read about it afterwards. No food or drinks were served, no venue was secured, and actually everyone was sitting in different places all over the world.
It was organized by Lara McCulloch-Carter at Ready2Spark which is built to elevate the awareness of the events industry.?
The attendees? All sorts of events and meetings related people.
Here is how it is done – if you don’t have a twitter account, get one now. It is really easy and takes 5 minutes to accomplish. Go to www.twitter.com and sign up.
Next step is to log into http://search.twitter.com on Mondays 9-10PM EST and put “#eventprofs” in the search area. Now, all you have to do is refresh the page to see new chats coming through. It’s as simple as that.
So do you want to join in the conversation?

Then open up another browser window or tab and use your new twitter page (or tweetdeck.com) to return tweets using the hash tag #eventprofs after or before every “tweet” you send which will alert everyone following along on search.twitter.com

Even if you miss the weekly chats, you can go to http://search.twitter.com and read the whole session afterwards. Pretty cool, right?

Want to take it a step further?

This can also work as live-in-conference sessions. Give the room a #hashtag and let the audiences go wild. This is called a backchannel which can be annoying or really helpful to in understanding and providing what the audience is really looking for in the session.?

Why have a backchannel going?
?1) It helps audience members to focus?
2) The audience gets more out of the meeting – plus notes to look back on?3) Audience members can get questions answered on the fly without the need to lean over and ask a neighbor what has just happened.?
4) The audience can really participate – Answer questions for each other regarding the speaker’s talk.
?5) Sparks ideas that the audience can build on.?
6) People at home can participate.?
7) You can meet people this way. Find some like-minded or interesting people and connect through twitter.?

Presenters can mold presentations for the audience’s best interests during the talk.

Please add me to your twitter follows I would love to chat more! http://www.twitter.com/mmcallen

Mike www.twitter.com/mmcallen