In 2008 I was actively Twittering from the ESRI UC, however, this year was a much difference experience, mainly because there was much more participation (from ESRI, conference attendees, and non-attendees alike) and much more attention was given to Twitter and to tweeting from the event.
The Twitter hash tag stream on #ESRIUC was buzzing day and night from San Diego, with much interesting conversation, tips, and feedback circulating.
The only down-side that I realized was that Twitter and was appears to be the company's efforts to address Twitter spam screwed up the experience for many and resulted in conversations and tweets being excluded from search results. for yours truly this was a HUGE disappointment and a valuable lesson learned. don't depend too much on those free services and social streams that take advantage of open APIs! Myself and several of my followers noted that we thought it was quite interesting that we are all still being bombarded with Twitter spammers that are frequently reminding us how we can easily add hundreds of new= followers, while at the same time, innocent victims like yours truly have been penalized and had postings blocked from Twitter - messages along similar lines can be found by searching the hash tag TwitterFail.
I noticed on day one of the Conference that when conducting a search on twitter conversations for items containing the official hashtag - #ESRIUC - that none of my postings were appearing. Imagine my disappointment, frustration and confusion when I noticed this! I have to admit that it seemed to me that other tweeters that I was familiar with were not showing up in the results as well. I have to admit, this really burst my bubble, particularly as I was expected by many to be one of the most active Twitterers chatting from San Diego about the ESRI UC experience. This wasn't a total loss as all of my 2,000+ followers were privy to seeing tweets that I was sending, however, not showing up in such a popular search stream did mean that anyone not following me and searching the hash tag, would not see my tweets and even worse, would not have the opportunity to connect with me or add me as a follower. Interesting to note, I was able to post or re-tweet from some of my other twitter accounts, however, I elected not to do this very often as it could have violated some of Twitters "rules" and also confused some of my followers - yes Twitter, I do play fair!
Perhaps I'm ranting and whining a bit, but in my mind this is a big story since if it can happen to me it could happen to anyone else; I also feel its important to bring up because Twitter played an important role in the conference and ESRI and others were depending on me to be an active and vocal twittered. Given my role as a content creator, writer, and industry evangelist, I depend on Twitter as a vital communication link to the online world. hell, my ability to connect via WiFi may as well have been taken away. On the upside, I was fortunate enough to have a number of great Twitter followers in San Diego who were actively re-tweeting my tweets and sharing some of my posts with their followers (you guys know who you are and I really appreciate it. particularly @geoPDX).
Some Twitter observations
Twitter indeed played an important role at the user conference this year. Case in point, ESRI provided a social media lounge on the exhibition hall floor where attendees could kick-back in a comfy chair, plug-in and tweet, blog, or even have a face to face chat (kudos to ESRI). There was also a large plasma LCD in the lounge streaming the ESRIUC twitter conversation via TweetDeck. very handy. perhaps next year a few more screens around the convention center will be available to enable more people to follow the conversation. ESRI also provided a large area in the hall at the plenary session where bloggers and Tweeters could sit, plug-in and write or tweet. again, a great idea and very welcomed! There's no doubt that this helped many people to share their ESRIUC experience with those following on the outside.
The official ESRI conference Twitter team (@ESRIUC) used Twitter to send important notices - this was another very handy resource and I really appreciated. Of note, I set @ESRIUC and a few other twitter accounts to send me updates via mobile, something that proved to be very handy. This is easily done by any Twitter user by simply visiting one of your followers twitter page and toggling the receive updates option on. Finally, getting and sending direct twitter messages in order to setup meeting times and locations (and party invites) proved to really help my conference experience - again, another great reason for using Twitter while at an event.
Set device updates = "on" to receive tweets via txt message = Handy!
Finally, one of the greatest benefits that Twitter provided me and many followers of mine was the ability for me to easily post and share photos and videos, thus extending and sharing the ESRI user conference experience with many people that were not able to be in San Diego with us -- Of interest, I was using a powerful Nokia N97 smartphone to capture photos and record videos, then sharing the media with the world using tools like Qik (qik.com), Flickr, Nokia's Ovi share, facebook, ping.fm (for upload) and Twitter.
Other Twitter Success Stories from ESRIUC
There's no doubt that many people are still wondering about the uses and merits of using Twitter.. Why Twitter?? In addition to the obvious benefits like sharing news, tips, and thoughts, I saw many benefits while at the conference.
The ESRIUC Tweet-Up
Tweet-Up - I elected to organize a small tweet-up while in San Diego. Twitter enabled me to plan the informal event and with the help of a few followers who spread the word, about 24 or us got together on Sunday night prior to the conference to have a face-to-face, talk Twitter and discuss the user conference. it was a great time.. Hell, ESRI's @JimBarry even brought official GeoTweet buttons, stickers etc. testament that ESRI was supporting Twitter users and the small meet-up. Thanks to @gisguy for also promoting and bringing a few books as prizes and thanks to ESRI Press for supplying me with books that I donated to some of the tweeters in attendance - 3 lucky people even got some cool Tweet-up t-shirts that I brought! Huge thanks also to the sponsors for picking up the tab at Dick's. a very nice move and much appreciated!
That's @GISGuy and @GeoPDX at the first ESRI UC Tweet-up (Merrick guys, Bill and Gary in the background) , held at Dick's Last resort on Sunday night prior to the UC kick-off - about 20 people attended and a great time was had by all!
Other useful ways of using Twitter at the ESRIUC
Sharing comments during sessions - something I found valuable was the comments that were flying around during sessions. Feedback was good and people even sent in questions for people to ask. I even had people send in requests to me to grab photos and videos of specific things.
Sharing party tips and social events - I received a number of direct twitter messages from conference attendees wondering when and where some special events and parties were taking place. I was able to help out very easily via simple response ala Twitter.
Project wins - I spoke to one attendee who noted that he had scored several project wins that he attributes directly to Twitter. a couple of contacts were made from people at the user conference. a great reason to Tweet!
Followers - I not only gained a bunch of new followers while tweeting from ESRIUC (I can only imagine how many more I would have secured if I was showing up in the Twitter search results) but I also added loads of new followers that I stumbled onto on the ESRIUC stream - what a great way to find people to follow. I also found a number of companies and their official twitters, many of them I had no idea were Tweeting - hey companies, a reminder that you need to add a link to your Twitter acct from your website using a cool Twitter badge, and you also need to mention your Twitter name in your press and in your email signatures.
staying in touch with Jr - this was my first conference experience bringing along my son. Twitter played a vital role to help us stay in touch. Cole (@coletham) was equipped with a Nokia 5800 smartphone, a data plan, Gravity Twitter client, and Qik for mobile uploads. Cole tweeted as he moved about San Diego's Gaslamp and I would receive auto text alert notices - a very handy safety net that helped us both. heck, he even contributed tweets, photo uploads to Twitpic, and Qik videos to the #ESRIUC stream!
Communicating with my Twitter followers - they could share a bit of the ESRIUC experience through my eyes
I uploaded my videos vi live mobile streaming to www.Qik.com/gisuser - Tweets were auto sent to inform Twitter of a new video uplpoad being available
Sending Tweets of my comments from sessions and on the exhibition hall floor
Hearing from the ESRI Twittering team about what they were up to.. like working on presentations at 2 AM!
the official ESRIUC twitter account was sending out important reminders - very useful!
HEaring and seeing what others were doing at the event was very useful and enjoyable!
Important reminders from the ESRI staffers while at the conference provided us with a glimpse of what the conference is like for them - and was a great way to get insider tips!
I could go on and on, however, you get the idea. ESRIUC was a great test-bed for many to put Twitter to the test. Overall it was a great experience and in my mind Twitter really enhanced my conference experience - and I know it helped many others as well. In my job as a press/media person it also helped the ESRI team to follow me and see what I was doing, thinking, and sharing, and perhaps most important to me, it helps me to extend my reach - a huge benefit to me and my company! In closing, I would suggest that anyone that plans, hosts, or attends similar events, whether big or small, take advantage of Twitter and use it to enhance the experience - start first with a short, logical, official event hashtag and promote the heck out of it! Event planners please also note that there are some great third party apps out there that can integrate easily with twitter and will be valuable to help you promote your event, manage your attendee registrations. Remember though, Twitter is still relatively young and is evolving and I'm a firm believer that there's no right or wrong way to Tweet as the service is different for everyone. To depend too heavily on this free and open service could also let you down or disappoint you so plan on a backup plan just in case ;0)
@JimBarry and others from ESRI's Dev Net (EDN) hooked us up with some "official" Geo Tweeter buttons at the Tweet-Up. I still have a bunch left for some "special" people so if you'd like one, feel free to contact me or or ping me on Twitter @gletham with your shipping address!
Some more of my observation regarding the Twitter failure:
- initial research to locate how and why a twitter search failure would occur led me to believe that I may have been the victim of being blocked due to what Twitter may view as "aggressive posting" , perhaps the result of posting too many tweets. It should be noted that I was not posting to multiple Twitter accounts (although a few posts were sent from my @gisuser account), I was not using any automatic posting tools like RSS feed push to inundate the hash tag, and I was not posting off topic.
- confusion did result when I heard from a few people that they actually were seeing my ESRIUC posts showing up on their search results. I have a hunch this may be the result of them using a different tool to extract search results.
- perhaps paranoid. I have to wonder if I may have been the victim of someone who's not a fan of mine falsely "reporting" that I was abusing a hash tag although I doubt this scenario.. You never know though!
- I have heard about a few other people who appeared to have stopped showing up I the #ESRIUC results stream - NAVTEQ's developer arm @N44D tells me they were a victim and actually have had their @navteq account suspended (they have no idea why) and @GeoPDX who was at the event tells me he was removed for some time from search results but managed to get back on by getting a hold of Twitter!
- after a little searching around when I returned home I did manage to find a page on Twitter's support site where I could report an issue and request that the problem be looked at. I'm still waiting for a response.
- I believe I was locked out of the search results on day 1 or even sooner. Perhaps my pre-conference tweets set off a flag in some way or maybe I simply tweeted too much?
- I have to wonder if some form of IP location detection (geo location) could have helped this? What I'm getting at is that given that the bulk of #ESRIUC twitter activity was originating from San Diego, wouldn't it seem logical that given that I was indeed in the geographic area where most the tweets were coming from that it follows that its very plausible that I was a bonafide twittered on that stream and not an abuser or spammer.
- a thought of mine also is that Twitter's recent attempts to resolve spam issues are simply flawed! There's been much discussion about Twitter spam and how to prevent/stop/slow it so maybe the company's initial attempts are simply failing!
- a failure on twitter's part, I've noticed that I can post via another one of my twitter accoutns (say @symbianone) and results from that account DO show up in the ESRIUC search stream. so really, all twitter managed to do is affect my @gletham account but had I really been an abuser they didn't lock me out at all.. i.e TwitterFail
- I have to wonder if tweeting from various means made it look like I was a spammer. While at the event I did indeed use several ways to tweet including simple text messaging, web gateway from m.twitter.com, mobile twitter client "gravity" on my S60 Nokia N97, simple web posting from twitter.com, a few auto RSS feed pushes of news from my blog and GISuser.com, and web notification being sent from ping.fm, shozu, face book, flickr and a few other social bookmarking tools that I frequently use. i.e.. Victim of social media social media power user!
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