Scott Porad

#140conf Recap Week: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

Interestingly, Twitter changed a lot in the time between when Jeff Pulver invited me to speak at #140conf and when I actually gave my presentation.  I wouldn’t quite say it hit the mainstream, but it went from underground to mainstream visibility, from a code word to a phrase in the lexicon.  My 93 year old grandfather has heard of Twitter now (although he doesn’t have a clue as to what it is).  More succinctly put: @oprah.  Enough said.

Twitter is the cutting edge of social media, and it’s only in an embryonic state.  One of the most stunning statistics I heard while at the conference was that all the tweets combined only add up to something like 1% of all text messages sent in the US.  And text messaging is by no means ubiquitous just yet.

That fact by itself was enough to make the #140conf important: nobody quite knows what Twitter means to our world just yet, and so it is valuable for leaders in the community to connect and exchange ideas.  While I am grateful for having had the opportunity to share my views, I am more grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of what has been referred to as The Davos of Twitter.

And that’s why #140conf was important: listening to the ideas, and meeting the people…too many amazing people to list without forgetting someone!  (Good news! You can listen to them all as well: the video-on-demand for the conference is available here.)  Ultimately, this is why conferences are important and why I enjoy attending them so much.  At each I meet people who’s intelligence and insight leaves me both humbled and inspired to work harder when I return home.

Finally, my recap will be incomplete without recognizing the hard-work and effort of Jeff Pulver.  Jeff has been on the leading edge of technology for quite some time, and while I had yet to attend one of his conferences, I jumped at the opportunity to do so because the word on the street was that his were simply la creme de la creme.  This is true; it was small and intimate, and the format led to genuine exchange of ideas as opposed to boring keynotes.  Jeff, thank you for putting on a great event!

#140conf Recap Week: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

I am very passionate about the message of the talk I gave at #140conf–that what separates Twitter from other social media, and how it presents a transformative opportunity is Twitter’s ability to create, connect and listen in the context of community.

However, I have been thinking a lot about the talk because, to be honest, I was not satisfied with myself and my presentation of that message.  I didn’t feel like I moved my audience much or made an impact.  To me, the delivery felt flat.

At first, I thought it was the format: a stage, with stationary microphone and podium.  I could not move casually and was uncomfortable.  But, the more I thought about it, I realized that wasn’t the issue.

At the same time, I’ve been reflecting on Seth Godin’s view on presentations:

The purpose of a presentation is to change minds. That’s the only reason I can think of to spend the time and resources. If your goal isn’t to change minds, perhaps you should consider a different approach.

and, but so I don’t feel like that was it either.

What I’ve concluded is an addendum to Seth’s view:

The key to changing the mind of an audience is to illustrate to them how doing so will make them better at what they do.

and, in my view, that’s where I fell flat.  In other words, I feel like I was effective at making my point about the nature of Twitter, but I didn’t back that up by showing the audience why adopting that point of view was in their best interest.

Effectively, this is the point that Kathy Sierra makes all the time about going beyond creating an awesome user experience to creating awesome users. In fact, as I was reviewing Kathy’s tweets for this post, I see that she’s made this point exactly:

Kathy Sierra Tweet on Presenting

It’s not enough just to make the experience good (i.e. to make the valid point), but to be truly effective you need to make the user better for the expeirence as well (i.e. better for adopting the point).

#140conf Recap Week: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a visual guy.  I am always drawing sketches to explain my ideas and half the time literally need a whiteboard to think straight.

At SXSW 2009 I serendipitously met Jonny Goldstein of envisualize.com.  We were walking toward the same session and struck up a conversation where he explained how he used animation to help businesses teach, train and explain.

Jonny has created the most amazing series of visual summaries for many of the talks at the #140conf.  I am completely flattered that Jonny included my talk.  The drawing is awesome!!

If you haven’t already, you can watch my #140conf talk here (it’s only a few minutes long).  You’ll see that Jonny’s drawing summarizes the talk perfectly!

#140conf Recap Week: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

Recently, I gave a talk at Jeff Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference in New York about the importance of “tweeting in the context of community”.

In essence, my point was this: hashtags represent topics of conversations. Conversations equal communities in the sense that a group of people discussing a certain topic form a community. My view is that Twitter is more about listening than talking, so to use Twitter most effectively means being able to know where the conversations and communities are happening that you want to listen in on.

That being said, I asked the audience: if you are a tweeter, or a social media expert who advises others how to tweet, or an app developer who builds tools that enable others to tweet, how are you tweeting in the context of community?  As the community of people who care most about Twitter, we have an obligation to develop the conventions, training and tools to enable tweeting in the context of community.

The video of the talk is below; it’s only 9 minutes long.