Banning tweets during conference talks at TEDxOttawa: brilliant or terrible idea?

[terriko]

I never knew it was possible to feel both so energized and so exhausted from a single day conference. TEDx was amazing, and I've got about a billion ideas firing in my head about teaching, communicating, passion, music, and great ideas. But I can barely look at a light without wincing, so although I feel guilty for missing the after party, I think I'm going to grab a light late dinner then curl up in bed early tonight.

Here's something unusual about the conference to get your brains going while mine sleeps, though. We were asked not only to turn off all our beeping devices during the lectures, but also asked specifically not to tweet about the event until a break happened.

As an attendee, I loved the visual quiet of not having people constantly opening phones around me. It helped me be that much more engaged in the talks. I actually like turning off my phone, and I had just watched Renny Gleeson's talk on antisocial phone tricks, so this rule seemed like a pretty neat idea. (PS - watch that video, it's 3 minutes of cell phone behavioural hilarity.)

However, while I'm willing to give up tweeting during a conference, I also know that tweets from my friends are a large part of the way that I engage with conferences I'm not attending. Knowing this, I guess, there was a designated tweeter who put stuff on the TEDxOttawa twitter stream but... well, go take a look at it. I'm too tired to articulate why, but I look at those tweets and feel like some of the magic, the passion, the enthusiasm just isn't shining through there. And if you look at the tweets using the #TEDxOttawa hashtag now you'll note that they're all like "woo, it was awesome, thanks!" which is nice, but again not particularly engaging to outsiders.

So while I actually liked putting away my cell phone, I'm also bit sad that I couldn't bring a piece of TEDxOttawa to my friends and followers while I was there, and I feel like TEDxOttawa missed out on a lot of potential buzz they could have gotten from excited attendees.

If you were organizing a conference, would you suggest this to attendees? Would you like this policy if it had been imposed upon you as an attendee?

And I'll leave you with one more thought: Ironically, one of the talks was about learning, and the presenter specifically suggested that we'd remember more of TEDxOttawa if we wrote about it. If only we could have tweeted! ;)

Comments

twitter during events

[(Anonymous)]

I thought it was a great idea for no tweets during the talks. Being present to each other in the moment is becoming a lost ability as we become so infused with the ADD qualities of the online life. I personally think it can be disrespectful for one to continually be engaged elsewhere and can definitely be distracting for those around.
Live steam was made available to those who could not be present in the room and were more than welcome to tweet the buzz of what they there watched and heard.
We were invited to do it at the breaks as well which also gave us ample opportunity to create buzz.
In regards to learning, from what I have heard it is actually through the long hand writing or words that new connections are anchored in the brain and not through texting kind of like the hand over hand demo of getting the right movement down.. This is perhaps another thing to look into further for another post but thought you may be interested.
I am not sure that the "no tweet rule" is good for all events but for TED I thought it was perfect.

Re: twitter during events

[(Anonymous)]

sorry but I am rebeccahappy who wrote this

Re: twitter during events

[terriko]

In regards to learning, from what I have heard it is actually through the long hand writing or words that new connections are anchored in the brain and not through texting kind of like the hand over hand demo of getting the right movement down.

Years ago, near the end of high school, I injured my wrists in such a way that I could still type but could not hold a pencil for any length of time. It was quite an eye-opener on to how you learn through writing, because I found it so difficult to remember things when a friend took notes or when I borrowed a computer to take notes myself. So it inspired me to do some research on the subject.

The short version is that it doesn't matter so much *how* you write; the important thing is how you engage your brain while you're doing it. Most of us were taught to learn while taking notes longhand or shorthand, so that's the easiest for many adults, but you can learn to learn while typing, texting, etc. as long as you know how to engage your mind in what you're doing. I was actually taught to *disengage* my mind while typing (so that I could go faster) so it took me a while to learn to engage properly, but I did eventually learn to learn while typing and managed to be successful in school while my injury healed.

Re: twitter during events

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for that info. I was a little concerned for their new generation who may eventually skip learning to print and write. I am forever impressed with university students who can take all their notes on the computer. I guess the key would be to engaging the brain rather thatn have it run on remote control.

Re: twitter during events

[terriko]

And to respond to the rest of your comments:

I too loved not tweeting during talks and being given the green light to concentrate fully, and I loved that other people didn't have their cell phones on. I think that unequivocally made the conference better for me as an attendee. (Well, except for the lady on my right who couldn't turn off her blackberry, but since she wound up leaving and missing talks, I'm guessing it was some emergency.)

But I challenge the idea that the breaks were useful as tweeting time: I was too busy talking to other participants to tweet during breaks!

Normally when I tweet during a conference, I use the dead time between talks as a time to summarize things -- public SMS notes, as it were, or sometimes private messages to colleagues that they should check out a given speaker -- but TEDxOttawa had very little dead time, thanks to a great technical team and a wonderful MC.

I don't necessarily think it's a failing. The whole experience made TEDxOttawa a wonderfully engaging event, above and beyond the academic conferences I attend more regularly. But it did take away one way in which I share such experiences with friends, so now I need to think of how best to do it after the fact. (Looking forwards to those videos!)