Back in the dark ages before cell phones could shoot video, taping family events was a larger and more choreographed production. The cameras were huge and expensive for a young father.
When I brought my newborn son home from the hospital, a friend loaned his camcorder to tape the event for posterity. I was hooked on the instant gratification. Shoot, pop the cassette into the VCR (remember those?), and enjoy! Soon I bought my own camera for taping birthday parties and holiday dinners.
Fun! I imagined myself a cinematographer, composing my shots and adjusting lighting.
But as I watched and re-watched the parties, Halloween costumes, and Christmas mornings, I noticed something. I wasn’t in them. I wasn’t there. Nor was my voice. In my effort to capture the authenticity of the moment, I didn’t interact with my subjects. I witnessed the events unfold, like a journalist careful not to become part of the story. I became the family historian, my children’s biographer, yet I was missing the real-time experience. The experience became watching the tape, instead of enjoying the party. More and more, I put the camera down.
Which got me thinking about Twitter. I’m fairly new at it and have only live-tweeted a couple of events. But immediately, I flashed back to my experiences videotaping family events. I realized I was reporting what the speaker had said a split second ago, instead of listening to what he was saying now.
Chris Brogan explored this in a recent post on microblogging from events. He asks if “live-tweeting a press conference might get the story into some kind of live action play faster?” But in a comment Lisa Newton asks, “Do you get so involved in reporting the event that you miss out on the event?”
Sharing the experience live is a hallmark of Twitter. But does reporting an event via Twitter interfere with participating in the event? Can journalists assigned to cover the fire also help put out the fire?
Do you find tweeting enhances or distracts from your event experience? Let me know.
Maybe it’s because I prefer to focus on one thing at a time, but live-tweeting stuff on Twitter brings a couple problems to the surface for me. Sure it’s cool to hear what’s going on at a conference that you can’t attend, but…
1. There’s usually no room in a 140-character tweet to provide context. At least 50% of the live tweets that show up in my stream are confusing because there’s no context. And it takes too long to track down and read all the previous tweets from that person.
2. If I try to tweet what’s going on, I totally miss what just happened. I tried this with the Twebinars that Chris Brogan and David Alston set up this summer. I thought it was a great idea, but after 10 minutes I stopped looking at the event’s tweetstream. I was completely missing everything that was just said while trying to read what others thought about had been said 2 minutes ago.
3. If enough people live-tweet from an event, Twitter may crash for the rest of us (hello, first day of CES). Maybe I’m being selfish, but Twitter was completely useless for me that day.
Just my take, but I know I miss the event if I’m too focused on live tweeting it. I’d rather soak it all in and go write a thoughtful blog post that puts it all in perspective that night. That’s more beneficial for me and I think it’s more beneficial for those fine folks I’m connected to on Twitter and my blog.
Kirk:
Interesting post. I’ve live-tweeted events such as 2.Ohio where my intent was to capture as much of the unfiltered “event speak” as possible. I simply wanted to parrot the event to as many people possible in near real time thereby relegating myself to be a de facto court reporter or closed caption writer.
On the other hand, the most fun I’ve had doing event tweeting was during the presidential debates. As I watched the discussions on the television, I, along with hundreds of other Twitter geeks, had parallel conversations about the telecast. The event was more experiential and certainly more enjoyable.
In a perfect world I think a blended approach would be best. Give some facts and direct quotes, then sprinkle in some editorial. Try to keep the use of Twitter to supplement your event experience, not supplant it.
Gary
This is an interesting thought experiment. Overall, it makes me wonder if someone taking excessive notes (staring down at their notepad the entire time) would be doing the same thing.
I’m not sure that the device (notepad, cell phone camera, video camera) has anything to do with the participation level. At most conferences I go to, it seems like 90% of the people there are not participating, but sitting idly by as events unfold in front of them. On online forums, these people are called “lurkers.”
At my last conference, I live-tweeted a few things. But it was mostly because the speaker made me think of something or I disagreed with them, and I wanted to capture the thought in the moment. So instead of taking notes, I tweeted. Later, I noticed several friends commented on my tweets, which made me again consider the speeches.
And maybe that is the difference: some live-tweeters are trying to capture the speakers thoughts, whereas I was trying to capture my own.
I appreciate those who live-Tweet an event. (Thank you, Live-Tweeters.)
However, in my experience, I must reflect on what I’m hearing. Transcribing in real time prevents me from reflecting.
For sharing, I live-Tweet.
For personal growth, I write later. Like now.
I’ve found that live Tweeting allows me to go back and recapture the parts of the presentation that I feel are important. When I know there are several people tweeting, using a # I know I can go off the board a little. I try to hit the point between the points knowing that someone else has the main points. No need for everyone to say the same thing.