Pedro Gil Candeias

• About Me

11-16-09

Twitter Wall: The Self-Sufficient Conference

Last Saturday I went to a smashing conference here in Lisbon: Upload Lisboa 2.0.

Apart from a great selection of speakers, its main highlight was a Twitter Wall. It was a big screen to the side of the panelists, on which TweetGrid was showing all the latest tweets that used the event’s hashtag: #uploadlx.

Right-hand screen: the Twitter Wall

People in the audience would tweet, and those tweets would show up on the stage, right next to the speakers. With absolutely no moderation whatsoever.

It was a bold, risky move by the host. There was every chance that the Twitter Wall would be used as a conveyor of juvenile cracks or shameless self-promotion. Strangely, though, we would have very little of that.

What we got instead was maybe a sample of things to come. I won’t call it an interactive conference, as some have, because most speakers were scarcely aware of what was being said on the screen. Nor was it just a glorified chat room. No, it was simpler but greater that that. The audience took the Twitter Wall and used it to enhance each presentation with comments, trivia and links for further information. And indeed the occasional joke, albeit for the most part very well placed.

There were even times when the Wall provided relief from a boring presentation. And even though for the most part this was achieved by shooting sly remarks at the speaker, a few people were kind enough to post the presentation’s highlights and make sure we all got the gist of it (props).

And during those times, the Wall made the conference truly self-sufficient, like the chatrooms of old.

I contributed very little to the Wall, yet I feel its presence made an already interesting conference truly come alive. The next conference I go to that *doesn’t* feature a Twitter Wall will feel very naked by comparison.

I’d like to finish with some great reviews of Upload Lisboa 2.0, most of which share my views on the Twitter Wall:

• http://blog.activemedia.pt/2009/11/16/o-paradigma-do-twitter-wall-na-upload-2-0-lisboa/
• http://www.maistrafego.pt/upload-lx-lisboa
• http://www.webmilionario.com/eventos-marketing/upload-lisboa-2-0/