At the SharePoint Conference a few weeks ago in Las Vegas I found Twitter to be a very cool tool during the show. I really like it from two perspectives: the presenter & the attendee.

From the attendee’s perspective…

When you’re attending a session you post messages in Twitter and include a hashtag that includes the session number. This message can be an open question, feedback on what is going on in the session or letting others know how things are going in the session. This is great for attendees that are attending the session as you can have a complete dialog during the session without interrupting the presenter or being rude to people sitting around you. What’s also cool though is the presenter can have someone else in the room answering questions as they come up. Another cool benefit is that other conference attendees in other sessions can see how other sessions are going and make a decision to switch sessions.

To most effectively do this, include the hashtag for the conference as well as the session number. That way people can search just on the conference hashtag or the specific session.

From the presenter’s perspective…

Unfortunately when we present, we can’t monitor the discussion during the session, but what’s really cool is being able to come back after the session and search for all the tweets that include the hashtag of the session. This way we can see what people were talking about and even follow up to some questions after the session is over. It’s also great because it gives us a chance to clarify something that didn’t get presented just right, elaborate on something in a demo, or even address a question that someone didn’t get to ask because we ran out of time or they had to run to another session.

Try it out! Next week at SharePoint Connections in Las Vegas, make sure you use the hashtag #spconn09 and one for the session you’re in using the session code. For instance, if you’re sitting in one of mine your tweet would look something like “In @AndrewConnell’s session #hdv301 on ECM at #spconn09 waiting for it to start.”

Looking forward to the dialog!!