SOBCon bloggers more social/interactive than SXSWers? In live twittering, yes!
Bloggers are more social and interactive in live twittering than are techies/new media gurus. At least that’s what we see comparing Twitter activity during a Charlene Li SXSWi 09 session with Twitter activity during a Chris Brogan /Julien Smith keynote session at SOBCon09.
The debate continues about live Twittering during presentations. Too distracting or valuable collaboration? Waste of time or productive? No matter your POV or behavior, it’s hard to argue a new ettiquette for this technology is trying to emerge. More on that in another post…
To add real data to the debate, here is another installment in our review of what actually happens at live conferences with Twitter.
In April we captured 686 tweets during the Charlene Li presentation at SXSWi in Austin. In May we snatched 330 tweets generated while Brogan and Smith were delivering their 45-minute presentation in launching their book, Trust Agents, at SOBCon09.
If you don’t know about SOBCon, get more detail on what an SOB is? Basically, it’s Successful and Outstanding Bloggers who get together and talk shop. Their latest gathering was in May.
Compared to the interactive, media, and tech types following Charlene Li’s delivery at SXSWi, bloggers RTed each other at twice the rate and referenced specific @usernames at three-times the rate during the Brogan/Julien session.
One in five “live tweets ” during Brogan’s presentation was a RT of someone else’s comment or idea. Nearly 80% of all tweets during the delivery referenced a specific @username.
So… bloggers at SOBCon made it a point to connect and spread ideas and people. SXSWi twitterers seem to have been more focused on the ideas and less on individuals.
Looking at what was actually shared in tweets, the bloggers wander and ponder aloud off-topic at a higher rate than 
do those at SXSWi. But, in the content, we find further evidence of this more social behavior: higher frequency of ”play-by-play” color commentary on the presentation, coordinating how/where to connect with others, and making a new connection during the live session.
Those at SXSWi, in contrast, were more focused on the topic, offered more discussion regarding the ideas presented, and were more likely to announce to everyone else where they’re at right now.
In short, bloggers are better at promoting and playing with each other via live Twittering (RT and @ use); but, they stray off topic more frequently in the process. SXSWers use Twitter more for capturing and pushing their own reactions to ideas shared, and rarely stray off topic.
Both, however, show that the bulk of live tweeting is on-topic interaction with very little slamming of the speaker or ideas presented.
The real question is what does this behavior mean to the tweeple, the presenter, and other attendees in the session? How do we better leverage the benefits of this live twittering without degrading the experience of all participating in a conference session?
There is more work to be done to give a credible answer. But the content being produced is worth its real-time creation. Attendees, presenters, and colleagues would do well to figure out how to capitalize on this backchannel resource to extend the reach of your mind, ideas, and experience.
Thanks again for the great analysis. I wasn’t at SOB09, but I wonder if the size of the audience and their familiarity with each other made a difference. At SXSWi, it was a large ballroom and there were also 2X the number of tweets, not sure about the number of tweeple compared to SOB09.
I was also stunned by the high % of off-topic tweets at SOB09. Chris and Julien are excellent presenters so this stat gives me pause. I suspect the high level of engagement between the bloggers carried over from previous sessions or conversations. I’d love to see if this stat changed as a time lapse during the presentation. As a presenter, it makes me think I’ve got to refocus the audience immediately on the topic — so that they stop distracting other tweeple!
I was at SOBCon and present during Chris and Julien’s presentation. I tweeted all throughout it – and kept my twitter friends updated. I also took notes throughout their presentation for my blog post on the topic.
This was the first time I met a lot of the bloggers I had been talking to online for months, so yes – the there was a lot of camaraderie. The good presenters held everyone’s attention, yet we all had our happy fingers banging away on laptops. The composite of the actual presentation, tweets about it, blogs about it actually strengthened my take away ideas. For me, that is a a good delivery – - when people talk about what you said, share their ideas about and ask a lot of questions. Our world is no longer one dimensional, is it?
What did Charlene Li speak about? I followed SXSW by some blogger friends that were there – and don’t remember what she talked about. Where can I read about that? Thanks!
@debworks
Christine – I think you’re right about the difference in the attendees and context of the meeting. I think there were three unique aspects of the session and the conference that could ahve driven higher use of @usernames and social activity: (1) familiarity and context of the conference (your point), (2) it was the first session of the conference so a lot of the conference kick-off was still permeating, and (3) a lot of people were coordinating in-person and off-site interactions as it started. But, looking at the tweets, there is evidence I think suggests bloggers are more cognizant of the payoff of identifying people in the comments/ideas being conveyed — so many more names were added to comments, quotes, ideas than we saw in your session at SXSWi.
The audience was definitely engaged with Chris and Julien and you can easily pick out the highlights from those ideas most RTed. But, here again, there was more RT activity of these “big ideas” or “buzzworthy” comments from those listening and tweeting. It’s as if there was more paying attention to the backchannel activity than there was among the more diverse and larger audience in your session. Is that because of a more cohesive audience who is, as a result, more interested in each other? Or is it the nature of the people at that conference?
Either way, to your point, it gives you something to consider as a presenter and knowing your audience. The off-topic chatter points to some distraction and anticipation of other activities — question would be how do you quickly address that live? Do you chime in and participate there, ignore it, or have some fun with it?
Anyhow — thanks for the thoughts.
Deb — first, thanks for sharing your firsthand experience at the session. It looked lively-especially the stripping references by some following it live!
Charlene discussed the future of social networks. Here is the link: http://blog.altimetergroup.com/2009/03/future-of-social-networks-presentation-from-sxsw.html. I’ve gone back and added it now to the post. Thanks for the reminder.
I agree there is some real value of having heard something, thought about it, recorded it, read it from someone else, and then gone back later to revisit and review. I think another issue here is how does this behavior change the dynamic of human interaction at conferences in a way that spurs creativity, collaboration, and interactivity… but doesn’t distract.
In my view, to ban twitter or online live collaboration during a session is short-sighted in most cases (perhaps sensitive meetings in the scientific or defense industry would be the exception). Instead, we need to keep thinking about how to leverage this in different ways if you’re the conference sponsor, the presenter, the participant who tweets, the participant who does not tweet, or the off-site observer catching what comes up.
Thanks for your comments.
I haven’t been to SXSWi yet, but I can tell you from having been to SOBcon 08, it is a VERY tight-knit group. It’s also a very small conference, with attendance in the range of 70 or less the year I went if I remember correctly, and I believe many of those were there the year previous.
SXSW is a totally different animal, with attendance in the thousands. You cannot get that same kind of familiarity that often leads to RT’ing when you have that many people. There are just too many voices going at once.
In short, apples and oranges.
My Suburbian friend… couldn’t agree more with the different environment, context, and set up. In fact, that’s partially the point of the analysis here showing the difference. You can see the same tool used in different ways when it comes to live tweeting.
What’s interesting, too, however, is how similar the two sessions are as well in a couple of areas. The one I find the most interesting is that the same percentage in both sessions (about 42%) included quotes from the presenter. So, even though the style, context, and relationships varied… you end up with the same volume of verbatim (or near verbatim) quotes from the actual presentation being distributed across the timeline. Similarly, the same percentage (about 5-6%) in both sessions included links to additional or relevant information online.
It seems while the sociality of the interaction varies, the relative content served up remains quite similar, at least on that level of quoting the presenter.