Last fall I chose to livetweet the 20th Anniversary conference. I described my experiences at the conference in a blog post, but here I will reflect on the experience of live-tweeting these events. Generally speaking, live-tweeting allows you to make connections and extend the conversation. Sharing your thoughts on twitter, challenging or complicating the presentation, engaging with another conference attendees regarding your interpretation or theirs – each of these actions allows audience members to dive into the conversation in a meaningful and scholarly way.

At many conferences, audience members are expected to passively absorb the presentation. They are only able to engage during the Q&A sessions or among other conference-attendees before or after a presentation. A real-time conversation on twitter allows the audience to engage in an evolving discussion with other experts in the field in an open forum. It also provides a space for emerging scholars to participate in this discourse and the shared experience provides the group with a common language and subject matter. As each participant is also processing the information simultaneously, the conversation is frequently revealing of the ways in which people interpret information. Using a shared hashtag and posting these thoughts in a public forum also makes the content of a conference transparent to those not in the room. In this way, conversations are extended to broader social and intellectual circles.

My day of tweeting was punctuated by my responsibilities as a graduate student volunteer. For part of the conference day, we were divided into break-out sessions where I transcribed the ongoing conversation. Trying to balance these duties with tweeting was complicated, but I tried to make visible the discussion that was taking place. I aimed to tweet at least one meaningful comment from my session and I could see conference attendees at other sessions responding to, and showing interest in, the discussions happening in other rooms. This was also telling about the way in which livetweeting encourages us to put discrete panels and presentations into conversation, allowing scholars to participate at multiple levels.