Last night I re-checked the #140conf website before I left work and found they had freed up some more general admission tickets (albeit £5 more than the first round), so I quickly snapped one up, booked the day off work and found myself at 7.45am this morning on a Jubilee Line train heading towards the 02 with laptop (Macbook), notebook (Pantone) and camera (Canon g9) hastily stuffed in a rucksack.
I arrived at about 8.15am and joined the other bleary eyed social media/web types outside the Starbucks wondering why the hell it wasn’t open already. The fun didn’t end there however: we quickly found out there wasn’t any free conference WiFi. After paying The Cloud £9.99 for 24hours usage and feeling suitably fucked over, I made my way to the Indig02 and took my seat.
What follows are some highlights, thoughts and quotes from the day.
Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver)
- “Listen, Connect, Share, Engage”
- Jeff Pulver liked the idea of a GT to signify a “Guest Tweet”.
- Jeff Pulver compared his first experience of Twitter to his first experience of Ham Radio as a child.
Babs Rangaiah (@babs26) & Laura Klauberg (@lklauberg) on The benefits of Twitter
- “Twitter without links is like cornflakes without milk”
- “Twitter is the most measurable channel out there”
- “No one has nailed social media yet”
- “Real time internet is here to stay”
- “Live the space”
Stephen Fry (@stephenfry)
Watch Stephen’s keynote here:
- “Twitter is human shaped, not business shaped”
- “It is called ‘Twitter’ not ‘SeriousDebate’ or ‘MarketingTool’
- “Participation is understanding”
Andrew Keen (@ajkeen)
- “We are discovering how to resell ourselves”
- “Authenticity is power”
- “Authenticity is currency”
(More here: http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2009/11/twitter_140_2_-.html)
Jeffrey Hayzlett (@jeffreyhayzlett)
- The 4 Es…Engage, Educate, Excite and Evangalise.
- “Twankers” (explained here)
- 1/3 of people get twitter straight away, 1/3 get it eventually and 1/3 will never get it.
Venture Outlook
- “Real-time web is greater than Twitter”
Kevin Holley – Co-inventor of SMS (@gadget37)
- SMS was meant for business but only really took off when consumers started using it
Small Business
- “1/5 of small businesses are on Twitter
- “Twitter has to get very big before it can get very small”
BuyACredit.com (@buyacredit)
(More here: http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2009/11/twitter_140_con_2.html)
Twitter and Brands
- Twitter is not a numbers game. Think less about numbers and more about depth of engagement
- “It’s about the conversation”
- Twitter followers can act as one giant focus group
Universal McCann
- “1/5 of all active internet use is mobile”
Kevin Slavin (@slavin) on Objects that tweet
- By the end of 2012 physical sensors will create 20% of non video web traffic
JP Rangaswami (@jobsworth)
- “We are moving closer to the internet of things”
(More here: http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2009/11/twitter_140conf_2.html)
Police who tweet (@wmpolice)
- 15 (out of 43) police agencies in the UK are on Twitter
- “Twitter is like a freight train – you either get on it or get hit by it”
- Twitter is part of core business for West Midlands police now
- A protest in Birmingham wouldn’t have been policed correctly without Twitter
- They are rolling out Twitter accounts to officers – “Give them guns, give them tasers, give them Twitter”
Education
- “Teens don’t tweet” is a myth
- Many schools and colleges ban Twitter/Facebook
- Teaches children to write for a purpose
Future of communication
- “If Twitter is the new telegraph what is the new telephone?”
- Google Wave allows people to interrupt thoughts before they are finished
e-democracy
- Last year: Facebook app, This year: Twitter strategy
- “Light/rapid interaction”
- Twitter is good for short term campaigns but how can it be used for long term campaigns?
Media
- Financial Times use it to gage popularity of stories and follow up on them when they are written
- 30 – 40% of Radio 1’s weekend music requests come from Twitter
- They use a “Would you say it on air” approach to presenters personal streams
- The #iranelection was a tipping point
So that is a very quick round up of some of the main things I took away from the event. There was so much content and discussion that it would be impossible to capture everything (I made about 34 pages of notes). The lack of WiFi and the temperature of the Indig02 (like a freezer) were two small negatives amongst a whole day of positives. Most presenters could have done with more time and a few didn’t seem relevant (to me anyway), but it is always good to have some variation.
Thanks to @jeffpulver and all the speakers for a really interesting and informative day!
(Here is my flickr set -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/beedee/sets/72157622829007148/)
