Lists and Waves

The fact that Twitter,  Twitter Lists and Google Wave exist warms my heart.  They are tools that generate their own innovation buzz eco-system and drive what this blog is all about: Future Business.  Foundational tools like these, along with open source projects, are the essence of the web2.0 innovation renaissance.  Think about how fast tools and processes can iterate today to match widescale and niche user needs compared to where we were 10 years ago.

At the moment it is the wild west for these innovation eco-systems.  Everyone thinks they have a good idea and they are running full-speed either with a little bit of money or completely bootstrapped.  Over time, we will start to settle on some valuable use cases and the real money will head in that direction.

As an innovator interested in new ways that business can operate, both tools’ potential fascinates me.  While Twitter lists is pretty much what I expected it would be, Wave did not live up to my initial expectations.  I’ll give both a fair shake over a period of time because, like Twitter itself, there is likely a path of use evolution.  The truly valuable use cases might not show themselves until 3rd party apps have been written that run on top.

For Twitter Lists I am starting to see

• Lists that you are in can be a crowd-sourced social descriptor of what you tweet about
• Curating a popular list gives you credibility as a networker in the space that list covers

For Wave I think we are going to need tools and agreed conventions which

• Help us collectively “garden” (manage) waves.  Waves have structure and are objects intended to grow over time.  Because they become more complex over time, they need constant management in order that they are accessible to newcomers and previous visitors/contributors alike.
• Help us find portions of waves that are relevant to our needs and re-use those elements in our own content spaces: other waves, blogs, etc…

Long live the companies that are thinking about how to start the next innovation eco-system.

Chats for Associations

There is already a meta-discussion on Twitter called #assnchat where association leaders collaborate.  How many of those associations are using a Twitter Chat (overview, tools) to create an additional collaboration avenue for THEIR members?  Judging from the Twitter Chat Schedule, the answer seems to be, “very few”.

It seems that social media savvy individuals rather than associations are the ones starting the chats.  Lara Mculloch-Carter (@ready2spark) started #eventprofs.  It could have been MPI.   Jeff DeCagna (@pinnovation) started #assnchat.  It could have been ASAE.

On the recent Oct 6 #assnchat (transcript), I moderated a discussion of how and whether associations should be creating Twitter Chats for their membership.  The chat included some good reasons for an association to run a Twitter Chat

1. It provides another avenue for collaboration
2. It’s free so it can be added as a benefit without driving up costs
3. Content tends to be very good on chats
4. Less intimidating than a conference call for those who are shy to speak out
5. Chat attracts attention from members and prospects due to its nature of tweets going out publicly

and some reasons why an association may not want to run a Twitter Chat

1. Discussion is 100% open.  There might be a privacy issues which necessitates more of a walled-garden
2. Participation may be low until more people are on twitter
3. Yet another channel might spread the activity even more so that it is hard to gain a tipping point of activity in any one channel
4. members may want a non-computer based collaboration since they are already on computer all day

In my personal opinion

• #1 – Certainly a good reason that you should watch out for
• #2 – Even with only 3 people in a Twitter Chat, you can learn a lot.  Get started.  Once word gets out, more will join
• #3 – when done well, channels feed each other rather than take away.  Tout your website during the chat and talk about the chat on your website.  Mention the chat during your f2f meeting and gain registrations for f2f from the chat
• #4 – I have found that most people who spend a lot of time on a computer, prefer additional means of communication that use the same device.  email, IM, and even Skype are often preferred over the telephone by heavy computer users.

A chat session is never going to replace face2face collaboration.  Due to human nature, we develop a significantly deeper/quicker bond when we can see and touch each other.  But, we should not consider the choice an either/or.  Chats can increase the demand for f2f and they can help with the hype.

There is a very different set of opinions based on the same chat session over on Memberclicks.  I hope you will chime in with some of your thoughts either here or there.

The Evolution of Twitter Use

Disclaimer: I am not saying that everyone evolves in the way described in this post.  However, I do believe it is a trend.

Here are the steps I believe many people go through

Stage 1: What the heck is this thing?  What a waste of time.  Most of the people on here are talking about nothing (or at least nothing of interest to me)

Stage 2: Why does everyone keep raving about Twitter?  Maybe I should take another look.  Hmm, I am starting to find some interesting people.  I will login periodically to check out what they have to say.

Stage 3: I am finding more and more interesting people to follow.  People are starting to follow me, too!  I find myself checking Twitter more and more often now.  I am using ________ (Fill in the blank with TweetDeck, Seesmic, TweetGrid, etc…) and it makes everything so much easier.

Stage 4: What fun it is to track how many people are starting to follow me.  I am now thinking about things I can Twitter throughout the day.  I check it and post several times a day and I am finding it hard to keep up with the flow of information.  I have found TwitterGrader to keep track of my progress.

Stage 5: This is getting to be too much of a drain.  I am going to have to be OK with the fact that some things will get posted that I will not see.  I have found hashtags.  They make it so much easier to just track topics of interest.  I am starting to use Twitter for my business and have found some tools like hootsuite that are very helpful.

Stage 6: Some of my hashtags are actually communities.  They have Twitter chats which take place weekly and all the members support each other.  TweetChat and twebevent are two apps that I use to take place in these community discussions.

Stage 7: I don’t watch my main Twitter stream at all now.  I am using _______ (TweetDeck etc..) to create saved searches and groups.  I have a few Tweeple subsets that I check their streams as a group.  Otherwise I just check hashtags and participate in Twitter Chats.  I am getting to be friends with several of the Tweeple in the Chats.  I have even phoned a few of them to share ideas.  They are all so knowledgeable and helpful.

Stage 8: You tell me.  What happens next?

Thanks to @samueljsmith for the recommendation to add a poll.  Here it is.  Share your Twitter Stage

Follow me on Twitter through

• @spkrinteractive – speakers, events, digital media
• @swanwick – knowledge management, RSS, personal
• @twebevent – Collaborative Media: mashup of video and Twitter Chats

Association Meeting Simulcast

On 8/26 at 6:30pm we went live with the first online simulcast for the Knowledge Management Institute.  We did it even with a few last minute challenges: one of our 3 speakers dropped out on the day of and our A/V expert also dropped out on the day of (both due to illness).

We soldiered on.  This post is both the story of what happened and the lessons we learned from the experience.  I hope it will serve as some sort of a guide for other associations.  If you have experience in this regard, please share as a comment.

Marketing: we promoted the free event on some KM mailing lists, our own mailing list, KM LinkedIn groups, and Twitter.

Preparation: we tested as much as we could (hardware, software, bandwidth) days before the event.  We arrived to the event 2 hours early to set-up equipment and run tests.  We could not get our video camera to stream (remember, no A/V expert) so we went with a back-up webcam.

Event: we went live within a few minutes of on-time.  We started and stopped the live event after each session because we wanted it to be broken into separate files.  We were running a Buzz format session which means 3 speakers for 10 minutes each and then 20 mins of discussion in-between.  We had ~15 person online audience for just about the whole event.  We hope for more ongoing, but felt that was good for our first event.

Here is a description of the software that we used (all free):

• We kept the camera on the speaker and we used procaster.com (free download) to merge in the speaker’s slides from the streaming computer.  An on-site producer selects between speaker-only, slides-only, and smaller speaker together w/smaller slides at each point in time for what goes into the stream.
• Procaster.com automatically streams to an account on livestream.com (free account if you are willing to allow some ads into your video stream).  You can pay money if you want the ads removed.
• We took the embed code from livestream.com (it shows up right on the widget) and pasted it into the “Embed” field in twebevent.com.  This combined our live video with a Twitter Chat and placed it in the twebevent schedule for additional exposure.

To accomplish the above software configuration I recommend someone who is at least intermediate with using web applications.

Other important items:

• you will need upload bandwidth of at least 500kbps (.5Mbps).  You can test that with speedtest.net from the location where you will be streaming.

Lessons Learned:

1. It is best to outfit the speaker with a wireless mic that draws the sound into the streaming computer.  If the speaker is not mic’ed, you may get variable sound online as they walk around.
2. Camera with tripod and zoom allows speakers more mobility
3. If you are at a hotel with a conference code to get on their wireless, make sure that it allows you several connections.  This will allow some flexibility with testing (one streaming, one watching) as well as the ability for some on-site people to be tweeting to the event while another is running the livestream.
4. If your event is structured like the Buzz where there are periods of time that the audience is discussing something at individual tables, point the camera at the crowd so that the online audience at least knows what is going on.  Also keep them posted on timing via Twitter
5. If there is on-site Q&A, draw some of the questions from the online environment.  After the on-site session is over have the presenter answer more online questions on camera just for the online audience.
6. If you have an extra projector, project the tweets that are coming in during the presentations.  If you have a very large audience, you may want to moderate that Twitter stream.  There are a few applications that will help with moderation.  Twubs.com is one.
7. Upload the presentations somewhere that they can be accessed via URL (if you don’t have this, you can do it with Google Docs, remember to make the docs shared as “public”)  Link the uploaded docs into the twebevent so that people can download if they like.
8. Open the presentations on the streaming laptop in “Normal View”.  Then use the procaster “Zoom” function to frame the slide.  This will allow you to do other things on the screen like: changing from one presentation to another, use the procaster producer, and use the slide picker on the left to jump to any slide without flipping around the slides

All in all it was a great experience.  You can view some of the videos that we captured at http://twebevent.com/KMIevent.  We will be running another simulcast on Oct 7.  Join the KMI mailing list or just follow the #KMers hashtag for more information as we get closer.

Please contact me if you are interested in learning more.  I am @swanwick on Twitter

The Twitter Chat experience

There are lots of articles and blog posts out there that list Twitter tools.  Very few of them seem to discuss the actual uses of those tools. Since the beginning of the year, I have been involved in scores of Twitter Chats and I am always on the lookout for better ways to handle them.

Below you will find a list of Twitter Chat tools and my personal opinions of the pros/cons of each one.  If you would like to share your pros/cons, please do so in the comments.

TweetChat

Tweetchat is the leader in the Twitter Chat race.  It is my favorite chat app and it is the favorite of most Twitter chatters.  The TweetChat experience is simple and yet powerful.  To my knowledge they are the only app where you enter the hashtag once and then it is appended to each tweet for you.  They do not append any additional URL’s.  These alone are reasons to make them #1.

Another very important feature they offer is the ability to determine the speed that the tweets will refresh as well as pause the stream.  While this may seem trivial, you will understand why it is important when we get to savorchat.   Tweetchat also allows you to block/feature users, reply to particular tweets,  re-tweet any message, and favorite any tweet.

I have only used Twubs for testing and never for a whole chat.  The reason is I have an idealogical difference with the fact that they default to tweeting their URL with every tweet.  While twubs is not as good as TweetChat at the actual chatting, they are an interesting choice to view a hashtag BETWEEN chats because of the content that can be connected around the chatting community: Links, members, images,

and   

Both of these apps allow you save searches.  This feature can be used to follow a hashtag chat.  While it is nice to be able to work within a familiar Twitter environment, the huge problem is that you always have to remember to type the hashtag.  Call me lazy, but that is too much work for me.  :)

Similar to TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop you have to remember to type the hashtag.  One advantage TweetGrid has though is that you can create a URL that automatically opens a specific set of searches for anyone who uses it.

Writing this blog post was sparked after experiencing my first SavorChat on Tues night.  On the one hand, I am really excited because they have some features that I have been thinking would benefit chats.  On the other hand, their first implementation has enough negatives that it is almost unusable.

1. They are attempting to provide breadcrumbs that show the reply chain of a particular tweet concept.  While this is useful in theory, there are a few problems.
   • Everything happens so fast in a Twitter Chat there is not really time to analyze the chain
   • Twitter chat replies are like a game of telephone.  The reply to the reply may have absolutely nothing to do with the original
   • They take up valuable space so that less tweets can fit vertically.
2. They are attempting to solve the Twitter lag problem by providing msgs that do not go through Twitter but instead are posted directly to all the chatters.  Again, good in theory, but here are the problems
   • The tweets come in one at a time so that the screen is constantly moving.  Reading moving text is very challenging so readers keep losing their place and have to start over.  This makes the chat appear faster than it is.
   • The tweets are not actually going out to Twitter so we are not getting the benefit of the built-in marketing aspect that each participant is sending Tweets to all their followers

If savor chat were to throttle their updates to come in batches, default to tweeting every post, and provide the chain as an optional advanced feature; I think they might get to the top of the list.

If you want to add media to your twitter chat, there is a new application called twebevent just launching which will allow you to do that for free

What apps do you prefer for your Twitter Chat?

twebevent – video and Twitter

Events have been hit hard.  The perfect storm of the down economy, the stigma of business meeting travel, and the advance of technology have led to a sudden change in the events industry.   Less expensive unconferences and virtual conferences are booming.  Virtual components are being added to in-person conferences to help reach those who cannot travel.

Thanks to many great online tools, it is possible to collaborate and contribute in meaningful ways without attending in-person.  There are higher-end tools like The Social Collective, Pathable, and Crowdvine that have a nice feature set, but also an accompanying price tag.  Twitter is free and can be used without those tools, but takes some organizing:

• A blog post about a study of how Twitter is being used at conferences
• A paper: comprehensive academic view of Twitter use for conferences
• A great post from Travolution Summit 2009 about their Twitter use experience)

If you want to provide a virtual audience with content richer than Twitter’s 140 character information nuggets, there are new products emerging.  They not only harness the power of Twitter, but also combine a video/audio feed so that everyone can discuss the same content from wherever they are.  Your virtual audience will have a much stronger “feel” for your conference content.

twebevent.com is one such product.  It allows you to present your brand as the host, stream the live or recorded video, and combine it with a Twitter Chat using whatever Hashtag you prefer…..all for FREE.   twebevent is a new start-up so you may encounter some blips, but if you use the customer feedback (blue button on the right edge of their page), you can give your opinions for product direction.

twebevent provides the :mashup” environment, but a host still need to find a way to video capture and stream. Companies like Speaker Interactive can help with those logistics.  Products like ustream.tv and livestream.com can handle the live streaming.  Qik will even live stream from your phone.  YouTube and Vimeo are two good options for uploading recorded video.  In any of those cases, just copy the embed code to a twebevent and it will appear for your audience.

If you prefer to keep things really simple, avoid the complexities of video and just open up a phone bridge through providers like talkshoe or blogcastradio and connect the audio stream embed into the twebevent.

If anyone has any questions or comments, I am happy to connect.  If you want to read more, check out the lessons learned from the first twebevent live trial or try my previous blog posts re: “Future Conferences”  part 1 and part 2.

Community Intersection

In my personal opinion, the #1 rule for the success of an online community is that members should not have to go somewhere they don’t already go in order to participate.  Since that goal is usually quite challenging, the fallback is that if they do have to go somewhere else, there better be a significant quantity of links from where members are to where the online community is.

There are only so many places that people exist in the online space.  Facebook, Google, maybe LinkedIn, some to Ning.  After that it gets pretty fragmented.  Along comes Twitter.  Different people join for different reasons, but once they are there, the barriers between communities are negligable.  If you are wondering what does he mean by “communities on Twitter”, then you should check out the hashtag communities that are starting to form and the tools which support them (Tweetchat, Twubs, wthashtag).  A hashtag is just a keyword with a ‘#’ in front to denote a topic.

The intersection that I am talking about is when people post multiple hashtags in a tweet.  Eg. “There is a great new list of Professional speakers on Twitter: http://bit.ly/ManhC #spkrchat #eventprofs”   The speaker list is something that may be of interest to both speakers who might want to add themselves and event professionals who might want to book or at least follow certain speakers.

Now the members of both communities are aware of each other.  If this cross-posting continues, there is likely some cross-interest between the communities and therefore some intersection of membership.  Those who are members of one will find the second community very easily and have constant links to it put in front of them.

eg. If I am an event planner (member of #eventprofs) who books a lot of speakers, I am gaining awareness of this other community (#spkrchat) and become far more likely to join and participate.

If Twitter continues to grow and remains popular amongst regular users, watch for these communities to become quite important.

Best Practice Uses of Twitter

Don’t pay one of the umpteen Twitter con artists for information about best practices on Twitter.  Get it from the weekly #twchat Twitter chat that takes place every Tuesday at 12pm EST.  To join, just point your browser to http://tweetchat.com/room/twchat at the appropriate time.

Here is some of the information shared this week

For everyone:

1. Connect on a personal level whenever possible  –> Tweet This
2. Provide help to individuals. Don’t just shout about yourself. –> Tweet This
3. A few engaged connections are better than umpteen followers who pay no attention  –> Tweet This
4. Seek out communities with your interests. Twitter chats are one way: http://bit.ly/oXBBu –> Tweet This
5. Find interesting connections through the people that you trust/respect  –> Tweet This
6. Connect with people you meet on Twitter through email and phone. Take it to the next level  –> Tweet This
7. Combine Twitter with Live Video to create a twebevent  –> Tweet This
8. Use Twitter searches to monitor keywords that are important to you and/or your business  –> Tweet This
9. Respond to critics on Twitter quickly. See if you can understand and deal with their issues  –> Tweet This
10. Use a Twitter client app to improve access to your Twitter stream. Save yourself some time  –> Tweet This

For more advanced Twitter users:

1. Use an app like tweetlater.com to vet whether you want to follow-back on new followers  –> Tweet This
2. Use an app like TweetCounter.com to determine how your follower and followee counts are trending  –> Tweet This
3. Use an app like Twubs.com to build a community around your hashtag  –> Tweet This
4. Use an app like Tweetchat.com to participate with a certain hashtag community  –> Tweet This
5. Use an app to send anyone who follows you a quick intro message. (this one somewhat controversial)  –> Tweet This

If you enjoyed some of these Twitter best practices, use the hashtag #twchat to share your own and join us at Tuesday 12pm EST each week to share in real time OR share your idea in the comments below.

Hashtag Spam

Hashtags are used to tag posts.  They enable users to perform better Twitter searches and run twitter chats.  Despite denigration by Scoble, hashtag popularity appears to be on the rise.  As people add more and more Twitter followers, the “noise” level tends to go up and hashtags are a way to sub-divide the stream.  (NOTE: a hashtag filter is better than a generic keyword filter because the extra addition of the ‘#’ character shows intention to classify a post whereas otherwise the keyword could be in a post out of context)

Because receivers are starting to filter by hashtags, Tweeters are starting to use them so that their messages will be read by the target audience.  Unfortunately, where there is a target audience, there is going to be SPAM.  People who are selling products (sometimes completely unrelated to the hashtag) are now adding a variety of hashtags to their messages.

The next evolutionary step in the process is that viewers will soon have the ability to filter both keywords AND people.  You will be able to block out that SPAMMER so they no longer show up in your Filter.  You will be able to white-list particular people who you do want to get through your filter.  Tweetchat has recently added the ability to feature and block particular usernames from a hashtag filtered chat.

If you are interested in finding a hashtag chat, there is a schedule here.

The Twitter Noise Ratio

Whereas with email the SPAMMER needs to specifically target you and therefore the SPAM is clearly intentional, with Twitter it just gets broadcasted into the Twitter ether.   If you happen to be following the SPAMMER, you see the tweet.

Someone you follow might be putting out some really good posts and some really SPAM-like posts.  Since, in Twitter, you decide to follow the person and then get everything they post; some tweets will have higher value to you than others.  Some will skirt the line of SPAM and others will go over it (in your eyes).  This is not absolute as other followers likely draw a completely different line.  Remember, there are plenty of people out there who enjoy watching QVC.  If the noise/SPAM to value ratio goes up too high for you, you may eventually unfollow.  However, since that takes a purposeful act, many may suffer the noise until it becomes unbearable.

There are some new Twitter apps that are negatively impacting the noise ratio.

• Chat clients where chatters are filtering Twitter messages for a certain hashtag.  Their chat messages auto-include that hashtag.  eg. TweetChat.com While the chat makes total sense to the participants.  Other followers are getting bombarded by frequent often non-sensical messages.
• Games where the game is actually played with Twitter messages.  eg. playspymaster.com

I am far from calling out that the sky is falling.  There are also plenty of applications positively impacting the noise ratio.

• Tweetdeck is probably the most popular
• Seesmic Desktop is catching up quickly
• It looks there is a new entrant Mixero with similar features and increased usability

I expect the Twitter stream to get more and more noisy.  Likely both types of apps will grow significantly.

Swan