Should speakers ban twitter at their talks?
It’s kind of silly question as I’m not sure a speaker can effectively ban anything in their audience, but someone asked me this the other day. It’s an interesting question if you pile all the technology of laptops, mobile devices and phones, and how that helps or hurts the ability for a speaker to keep people’s attention.
A better question is: what is the best way for everyone to get as much value from the speaker as possible?
Specific to twitter, at least there is some data on the question. Over at Consumer Centric they’ve posted an analysis of live tweeting of a session. Here’s the summary (based on 686 tweets):
75% of all tweets quote the speaker
13.6% were alerting others where they were
6% arranged for meeting up to discuss something
5% praised the speaker
4.4% were random or off-topic
First off, it’s important to note this breakdown will change wildly depending on:
- How good the speaker is in keeping people’s positive attention
- The makeup of the audience and their interest in good will
As a speaker, the above seems like good numbers. Some of those tweets repeating what was said will hit people who aren’t in the room, effectively making the audience larger. Assuming they quote the speaker accurately, this makes the effective audience bigger.
But anyone who is staring into a laptop is not making eye contact with the speaker – they are taking a little bit of energy out of the room in order to give it to people who also have their eyes on laptops, either in the room or elsewhere. I’d rather have most people fully engaged on what I’m saying, and a few dedicated people live tweeting, then never being sure if people’s noses in laptops is a good sign or bad.
Read the rest of their post for a summary of kinds of tweets they found – if ever you choose to livetweet a session, there’s good advice here.
Here’s an idea for a way Twitter can contribute to a talk: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-take-questions-at-tech.html
If you don’t want to click through, the basic idea is that you tell attendees to direct all their questions to a designated twitter account during the session; when Q&A starts, you then see what’s been submitted and address.
This lets people ask questions when they arise, and it strongly encourages focus (since the question can only be 140 characters long). I’m looking forward to trying this out at my next few presentations.
I hate the use of Twitter during presentations, but we do use it at our events before and after the presentations, and during the breaks.
There’s a great Twitter visualiser at http://visibletweets.com which we display to maintain a sense of interest and fun.
I definitely wouldn’t advocate using this during presentations though, as it is deliberately quite distracting.
I hate the use of Twitter during presentations, but we do use it at our events before and after the presentations, and during the breaks.
There’s a great Twitter visualiser at http://visibletweets.com which we display to maintain a sense of interest and fun.
I definitely wouldn’t advocate using this during presentations though, as it is deliberately quite distracting.
PS: Wanted to say good post!
This is a great question/topic. I can see it from both perspectives: speaker & audience.
I am not a professional speaker, but I have done plenty of meeting presentations and it is certainly human nature to dislike the use of attendees’ electronic devices while speaking.
Professional speakers, just like any performer, are very strongly driven by audience reaction and sometimes rely on it to help craft their speech in real time. I think that speakers need to re-train themselves. While in the past, use of devices meant working on other things (eg. email) now if a person is tweeting about your speech (as the numbers indicate), they are likely sharing your positive message. That does three things
1. It helps spread your message well beyond the room for the organization that paid you to speak.
2. It provides great free marketing for other orgs to know about and possibly book you.
3. Because the person has re-typed (possibly re-phrased) your words, they have internalized your message much better.
I’m not saying it is going to be easy, but just because it doesn’t make you feel good, do not rail against the technology. Think about the cost/benefit of the slight loss of attention vs. the increased exposure.
Interesting post. I agree that eye contact with the speaker not only benefits the listener but shows respect for the speaker. Twitter when used productively can add value to most any presentation.