Comments on: Twitterprompter?

By: steve clayton

steve clayton — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:55:21 +0000

following on from our brief Twitchat last night on this JP, a few things to add.

last year at Thinking Digital in Newcastle I started using Twhirl during my presentation to get realtime questions and feedback and as much as I could monitor the backchannel. doing so actually seemed to increase the backchannel as people like to see their comments on the big screen during the presentation. Though Thwhirl isn’t ideal for this, it served a purpose with it’s “toast” pop up’s. It’s something I do now in almost every presentation and works well to engage the audience. What I’d really like is an applet I can run during right inside PowerPoint…i’m off to ask the PowerPoint team right now.

which brings me to my second observation. During the MIX09 conference last month in Vegas, the team from Vertigo built a very interesting portal for the event. Alongside the live stream of the keynote was a twitterstream on the hashtag #mix09 and people in the audinece were following this instead of watching the live keynote in front of them. it says something about the desire to discuss (in realtime) with others the events going on. fascinating to watch.

and finally, per my Tweet last night I’m sure the Tweetstream on TV cannot be far away. Over the last few months I have taken to watching events on TV like the Champions League or The Masters whilst using Twitter and watching the discussion build up as the event goes on. It happens with any major show now such as The Apprentice or MAsterchef and can be seen developing on sites like Twitscoop. Clearly we like the social discussion at events, be they live or on TV etc…

I’m not sure where all of this goes but it fascinating to watch and participate.

Maybe that’s it…the participation era is was Twitter is ushering in?

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:02:55 +0000

Belated point of information. Twitter has been made into an actual teleprompter. Via an arduino, a guy I know gave a speech that was tweeted out every five seconds onto an adapted till roll printer.

By: Yves Caseau

Yves Caseau — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 07:01:05 +0000

Great post – It’s this type of analysis which helps explaining why 2.0 communication tools such as Twitter are extremely relevant for companies, especially large ones. One of the benefits that I see in “microblogging” is the implicit “synchronisation” that binds participants.
Sharing a continuous flow of micro-information creates a “sense of proximity” which makes “other form of communications” more efficient since introduction/closure become less necessary in an “always connected” world.

By: Christopher Rollyson

Christopher Rollyson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:16:45 +0000

JP, thanks for some nice reflections.. you have me thinking. Since I deal with enterprise adoption of disruptive tech, your point about “you don’t have to be a techie” struck home.. one thing that the Obama campaign showed in spades was the enormous value of diminishing the cost of participation. I speak a lot, too, (mostly to enterprise groups), and I will implement this approach.. I poll the group frequently, but the backchannel, what people are saying amongst each other, is far more powerful and must drastically increase the speaker’s connection and relevance. Thanks for this convo! Cheers-

By: Easier Twitter Powered Subtitles for Youtube Movies « OUseful.Info, the blog…

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:51:09 +0000

[...] See also: Twitterprompter?, discussing several possible use cases for Twitter in a live presentation environment. Possibly [...]

By: mollybob

mollybob — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:07:09 +0000

I really like the idea of Twitter as a back channel because it also means others in the room can get a feel for what’s happening.
As for the presenter… depending on their experience maybe they can have a moderator help them? Is that too “junior”?
I’ve never seen a video overlaid with tweets before – that is so rich, it just gives it a whole other dimension of meaning.

By: JP

JP — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:24:07 +0000

Frymaster, if it means that 6th grade kids will start looking forward to being in school that is a good thing….

By: Frymaster

Frymaster — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:40:02 +0000

I’m sorry to bring this all down to my level, but I can’t stop giggling at the thought of what 6th grade boys would do with a hecklebot.

By: Mike Grace

Mike Grace — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:27:13 +0000

Great post! I love the things you have discussed here. I wish I could convince my fellow students and my professors to use some of these tools to improve the interaction and peer to peer learning and teaching in and outside of the classroom. Thanks again for the post and I will be sharing this with some of my professors.

On a side note, I was a teachers assistant for a beginning web design class this last semester and I got some of the students to join twitter and follow me. Throughout the course of the semester it was really fun and easy to help the students that were interacting with me through twitter and in general they did better in the class. I am not sure if the correlation has to do with the the better interaction and help they got from me via Twitter or if it was because those were the type of students more willing to try new things and improve their knowledge and ask for help. I might never know but it was still an interesting experience.

By: Tony Hirst

Tony Hirst — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:25:07 +0000

I started experimenting with simple hacked together tools to create standard format subtitle files that can be created from twitter searches over a particular period of time (eg the time a presentation was happening) and then uploaded to eg Youtube and overlaid on top of a Youtube published recording of the session.

The hack can be found here:
http://ouseful.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/easier-twitter-powered-subtitles-for-youtube-movies/

and an example from Lord Carter talking about the Digital Britain interim report can be found here: