140: The Twitter Conference – Who’s in?

Every day we hear about Twitter’s popularity - Record number of users, new celebrity members, Ashton Kutcher and his 1,000,000 followers. Another indicator of Twitter’s growth and popularity is the number of conferences popping up. Jeff Pulver is putting on his 140 characters conference in New York on June 16 and 17th. There is a one day conference, Twtrcon, in San Francisco on May 31st. And on May 26th and 27th, the Parnassus group is presenting the 140: The Twitter Conference at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

So where will I be? I am excited to join the 140: The Twitter conference as a speaker. I will be co-presenting a session titled: "Mining Twitter: Extracting Value From Conversations and Connections", where the latest tools and techniques for monitoring your brand will be discussed. I think this conference is fantastic because I will join fantastic speakers like 3 members of the Twitter team including API lead, Alex Payne as well as Jeremy Pepper, Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble, fellow Seattleite Kathy Gill, Warren Whitlock and Jennifer Leggio. Great company, don’t you agree?

I agree with Jennifer when she says on her blog, “I might be slightly biased, but the topics at this particular Twitter conference seem to be centered and focused on real-world use scenarios, not just grandiose marketing ideas. If you’re serious about implementing Twitter as part of your strategic marketing practices, or want to use it to build a brand, this is the con to be at”. This is also the only conference that has a very strong developer track as well!

To register visit the official site. The conference is an extremely affordable $249, but you can save 10% off the standard two-day pricing by entering the code 140tcr6 when you check out. And if you tweet about it, make sure you use the #140tc hash tag.

Please let me know if you are coming as I am sure there will be some great tweet-ups and I'd love to chat face to face. It’s an event not to be missed.

Enjoy the conference

A lot of great conferences took place this week: WWDC, TechEd, MarketingProfs B2B, Enterprise 2.0 and a lot of twittering to help enhance the conference experience. Some key essentials for me are to append the conference recommended hashtag to the end of your tweets and to take notes in your own voice. By using the hashtag, the tweets are all trackable chronologically on tools like hashtag and my favorite, twemes. Remember, if you choose to tweet conference notes, it is primarily for your own use. You are not a reporter, so write about your own thoughts and what you think of the speaker’s words.

Notable bloggers (and twitterers) Rachel Happe, Rohit Bhargava, and David Armano have written great advice on how to maximize your conference experience with twitter. In his blog post, Twitter like a Rock Star, Armano lists 5 tips for better conference twittering:

1. Filter the signal from the noise – Cut the fat from the steak and just tweet about the stuff that is impactful.

2. Color your commentary – As I mentioned above, express your point of view.

3. Talk to your audience – As you take notes, you will get responses to your tweets. Respond, answer questions, or ask the speaker the question.

4. Paint the scene – Describe what’s going on, so people can feel like they are there.

5. Do it for yourself – Use twitter as a notebook. If you are not getting anything out of it, then don’t feel tethered to your device and stop.

Happe presents 7 reasons how twitter transforms conferences:

· Prior to the event, twitter dialog creates demand for the event

· Share events with a broader audience

· Spontaneous planning of side activities at the conference

· Makes it easier to find people via location based tweets

· Audience participation

· Cementing the relationship bonds by meeting face to face

In How to speak at a conference without getting skewered on twitter, Bhargava gives advice to speakers:

1. Get a twitter account (of course, if you are here, you probably have one already)

2. Prep by checking out the event conversation

3. Focus on the audience reaction

4. Monitor mentions about you.

5. Respond to tweets

6. Learn for next time.

Great advice that if applied, not only will make you a twitter rock star, but will enable you to get a lot more out of the conference.