November 7, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item #SQLPASS on Twitter
November 8, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Speaking as one of those sending out quite a bit of info from the conference keynotes, I think that your observations are accurate. There was a lot of information going out in real time (and 140 or fewer characters at a time). I didn't re-send some bits as others were faster than I was. I sent out some news that had already been reported because I wanted to lock it in a little more. Sadly, I have to agree about the Dell speaker. I feel for the presenter and hope they find a better way to handle that in the future.
Of course, one of the great things that I got out of the Twitter feeds this year was the opportunity to meet new people and to keep up with what was going on in other sessions. I got some good info from @sqlbelle from some of the sessions she attended and resolved to get the slides/code ASAP from those and review those sessions earlier once I get the DVD. I was greatly amused that Paul Randall was able to heckle Buck Woody remotely through people using Twitter. I enjoyed meeting the Bingo players, though I wish there were more of them.
As you noted, Twitter can definitely be used for more than pics of meals and notes about "going for coffee" (which seemed to be available ~ every 1/2 block in Seattle). I've followed others attending conferences and they'll typically post some of the great moments from conferences I can't attend. It's not like being there, but I can benefit from those who are.
I'll also add in one last bit and say that it's great to finally put names to faces, but it's really, really hard to match up twitter names to real names. I still have a hard time matching many of the more creative twitter handles to their owners. 🙂 If I get to attend next year, I'll be joining in the stream again (to the chagrin of my co-workers) and if I can't attend, I'll be joining people like Jorge (@sqlchicken) in participating remotely.
November 8, 2009 at 9:47 pm
--Duplicate Comment removed. Somehow the original never reported success. Sorry.
November 9, 2009 at 6:44 am
I found tweets really handy if I wanted to find the "after" parties and where to meet people for breakfast, etc.
I'm hoping PASS keeps up the twitter feeds throughout the year and does more with it as next year's PASS happens. I had an idea before next year's PASS around Halloween, soemthing like Trick or Tweet. Maybe MVPs, board members, could ask questions on twitter and if you get the answer right you could win a prize; maybe a free pre-con session.
November 9, 2009 at 8:33 am
I found Twitter to be useful for arranging meetings (mostly dinner), no question on that. The commentary on the rest of the event was a mixed bag, but I'd say a lot of it was interesting too, though if adoption really spread I'm not sure it would remain usable as the noise level would be high. I think it might be interesting to have someone from PASS monitoring the various tags and retweeting things that are of value to most attendees, that way someone could get the raw feed via the tag or just follow the PASS account and get a more consise view.
November 9, 2009 at 8:49 am
There definitely is noise in there. I only follow about 121 people, which seems like a lot, but really that's about 20-40 people that post more than once a day. It's a reasonable level and I prune my lists periodically when someone is tweeting too much useless information.
The thing about re-tweeting to keep in mind is that there are circles of people. I know Andy Leonard has lots of developers following him, so if I retweet something he's done, I move it to a slightly wider audience in the SQL world. So don't be afraid to re-tweet, but think about whose things you forward on. If you're hitting a different audience, send it along.
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