My twitter experiment

Last year I dipped my toe into twitter (well OK, I signed up, posted a message and then didn't know what to do next) - fast forward six months and I attended ELI in San Antonio and twitter was everywhere. This time I play the role of lurker watching the conversations as they unfolded although I didn't get really into it until it was almost too late. I loved the way it created an added sense of community to the event (even for lurkers like me) and I definitely got an extra multi-dimensional experience of the event (although the twitter around the final keynote was an interesting departure into mob-culture that felt uncomfortable looking in).

My conclusion about twitter at that time - great accompaniment to a large event or community gathering, definitely enabling participants to get more out of the event than the straight non-twitter version, but not something you could do during normal life - that would just be a bit weird, wouldn't it!?

Fast forward again a couple of weeks and I have a week of self-managed time (some scheduled time to think/read/write) and I decide to give this twitter thing another try. I had a nagging doubt about my original assessment - perhaps if you make an effort to get involved you get something more out of it that I might anticipate. So, I passed my 100 tweets today (one of the benchmarks I set myself for concluding my "experiment" ....the other benchmark being just getting bored with it) and I think it is time to reflect on what I know now that I didn't know a couple of weeks ago.

Firstly, and most importantly, let me be clear - I'm totally hooked! I love it, I love the community and I definitely get something from it that was unanticipated - so the end of my experiment just means I move into doing it for real from now on.

So what did I learn?

Yes, you need to put some effort in, you need to make a conscious effort to try to post regularly - advice from a good friend and experienced twitterer @bryanalexander helped with this.

You need to actively build your network, you're invisible at first (although in some ways that feeling can linger - more later), so I used the twitter blocks and looked at who people I followed spoke to/shared with and tried to add them. Of course I added a few people I knew in real life (or had met sometimes only briefly/heard speak at conferences) - opportunities to sustain the connection over a longer period of time is such a bonus (I often feel that conferences, even the very best of them, are charaterised by a series of snatched conversations without the opportunity to discuss in depth)

The community is very generous in sharing resources - it can be hard to keep track of all the things shared but it has definitely given me access to (or reminded me to access) some really interesting thoughts of others. Particularly as many of my twitterii are in the US and so regularly accessing different resources from our usual haunts. I also enjoyed following other people's participation in events - I managed to piggy-back a few great sessions that there is no way I could have attend thanks to @cmduke.

Some people have way more interesting lives than me (and get to do way more interesting stuff at work), but then again one of the things I love about twitter is the mixture of styles, comments, approaches etc - I enjoy (obviously) the US elections discussion, I like the fact I know what the weather is like in Vermont both of these thanks to @bgblogging, what @jpostonday keeps in her basement and that @GardnerCampbell students are looking in to say "hi". Not to mention that I know what @ginsoak gets in the post before she even gets to work. There are such a diverse group and all bringing something interesting and extra to my life (but I don't want this to sound like an oscar speech so I'll stop now).

It can be a bit weird when you reply to someone you don't know and get silence a bit like the "who is she and why is she talking to me" party moment. Some people talk to each other (a lot and only to each other - more like IMing) and you feel very much like you're eavesdropping (v strange feeling). I felt obliged to add a photo in case people I followed knew me by sight - but that meant using that horrible photo as it is the only one I have :-( Will sort it out soon, I promise.

For work (which can often get a bit corporate, implementation driven and "managed", thus making a community of "like-minded" people even more important to me) it gives me rich, diverse observations and thoughts that are prompting in me more thoughts, some lateral thinking and even actions!! @intellagirl asked in her blog/podcast recently "how to reach past the converted" who are using these tools, well perhaps it is in the scatter-network - certainly I am convinced that my engagement with twitter (and therefore my continued interest in the discussion of experts) has influenced contributions I have made to the drafting and discussions around developing our institution's Corporate Plan (a five year business plan required by UK funding council of all HEIs) - this is not, in general, going to the read by the "converted" but the connections are being made!