Live Twittering During Your Presentation

Paul Gillan, blogging at Pistachio (a great resource for microsharing applications like Twitter), recently talked about the pros and cons of the instant feedback that Twitter can give presenters during their presentations. (I've talked about this before, here.)

He cites the main positive as the ability to quickly tailor your presentation to the sophistication and preferences of the audience, but cautions that the major drawback is the possibility of caving to the demands of only the most vocal in your audience.

I think we have to deal with this problem even with our old-fashioned, paper evaluations. There are people who fill out evaluations and people who don't (and people who simply go through the motions of checking "good" for all presentations). When reviewing evaluations, we always keep in mind that we're only getting one piece of the picture. Of course, we have a little more time to review those evaluations with a discerning eye when they're not popping up on a screen behind us as we speak.

What do you think? Have any of you attempted to run an event or give a presentation with Twitter humming along in the background? To use it effectively, are you actually using a "Twitter moderator" who reviews (and responds to) the real-time tweets? What issues have you run into?

Comments

[John Wilker]

We haven't used in in preso yet, but at our event, we set up large displays in the common areas and run a twitter screen. Our event has a twitter account so the tweets of it's friends show up.

We also use an Adobe AIR app for session surveys, it's a bit greener and we found we get a bit of a bump in fill outs. And the data seems less rushed "Oh crap it's over, I gotta fill this out" type of thing.

Would love to see some of my presenters use twitter int he background. Our next event, will have more panels, so I can see twitter as a huge boon for that setting.

[Alli Gerkman]

John--Thanks for your insight. I like your idea of having an event account and showing the tweets of those you're following (who are also your attendees.

Love your survey method.