My Day of Twitter

On the morning of October 8th, slippers on feet and coffee in hand as my computer connected to the world, I saw a tweeference to the Silicon Cape Initiative's launch event flash briefly in the corner of my screen. 'Ah, is that today?' I thought to myself.

Most interestingly, it was the #SiliconCape hash-tag that caught my attention.

I'd heard of Twitter integration into event proceedings using an assigned hash-tag or meme. This was from the sarcastic comments of someone at such an event who found the constant stream of information on large screens, both sides of the stage, distracting. Not to mention the surrounding flurry of fingers constantly pushing messages through mobile phones. Understandable. Social etiquette seems always to play catch-up with 'advancements' in technology.

But I wasn't phased. Clicking the #SiliconCape link immediately generated a real-time list of search results: the most recent 20 tweets containing the text #SiliconCape. Excellent! From the comfort of my home I could track what was happening at this event through the tweets of others. From what I was reading the opening talk was due to start.

I tweet: "Will be keeping a curious eye on #SiliconCape today. The seduction of technological creativity". With that I joined the conversation.

What I thought would be a mild distraction turned out to be an intense yet dynamic morning. My second tweet followed quickly for the benefit of my followers: "100s converge today in Camps Bay for #SiliconCape to manifest the Cape as Africa's Silicon Valley". Then, checking the search results, I realised Twitter had lit up in its way like a switchboard: "103 more tweets since you started searching". Oh dear!

At first I decided it wasn't as bad as all that. Every time anyone tweeted a choice quote from a talk, 20+ others retweeted it. All I had to do was scan through to identify what was fresh and original. A thousand tweets or so later I realised it actually was as bad as all that! It was a painful reminder of those days I scanned subject lines to filter 100's of SPAM messages each morning because at the time SPAM filters produced too many false-positives. It was like a tree full of budgerigars and I was exhausted just trying to keep pace.

There was also this feeling of shameful guilt towards my followers (although I do also wonder what percentage of followers actually read tweets and whether they read them all). Over a couple of hours I'd generated a fair number of technology/entrepreneur tweets (although nothing by the standards of some) directly related to #SiliconCape. Given that a significant portion of my followers related to my work as a Tantra teacher I felt this was of little interest to them. How could I spare them these tweets?

I tweet: "Two challenges with event tweeting: my follower's get bombarded (sorry!) and RT flooding... those interested are already onto #siliconcape" (and wonder if anyone actually took note or cared).

It was a valuable experience but by the time the proceedings where over I was drained. The excitement of the event and the thrill of participating so directly while not even being there took me on a high that dropped rather heavily in the afternoon. A good time to reflect on what worked and what didn't, seeing the opportunities for improvement or doing things differently.

One thing that occurred to me was Twitter's potential usefulness as a record to refer back to once everything calmed down and their was time to consolidate. To-date I've been frustrated withTwitter's apparently limited search but have recently discovered their advanced search facility. Very nice! Want to find out what's happening with the whales in Cape Town, search for whale near:"Cape Town".

So, Twitter events memes - what are your experiences or opinions? I would love to read your comments.

(Credit: Photo by Adrian Stanford)

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