As you know I attended a major academic conference in Singapore in August. I decided to live-Twitter the entire conference. The feed proved very popular with people back home, including neighbouring institutions apparently, since budget and time-constraints meant that only a few people could afford to go to .sg. The conference-Twittering allowed a limited amount of "vicarious attendance" via my brain.

How I did it: I avoided making negative comments about anything, except for a couple of very egregious presentations. I simply posted a two-line summary of every talk I saw, and wherever I heard something that really piqued my mind in a positive way---or I thought jibed with an interest of a known Twitter-follower---I tweeted a few more thoughts. I made sure to avoid backchannel construction except with people who really actually weren't there physically (but often they were asleep due to the 12h time zone difference).

I think what needs to happen is that our social norms need to settle down a bit, and then we'll figure out how to do it properly and it will all be par for the course.

Asad