How to present with Twitter and other backchannels
November 20, 2009
Presenting with Twitter can be challenging. Just about every week a new story of a speaker getting roasted on Twitter makes waves in the blogosphere.
I’ve written a free eBook “How to present with Twitter (and other backchannels)” to help you avoid that fate. There’s no sign up required. Just click and read.
I asked my trusted and expert community to review the book and say what they thought of it:
“Fantastic eBook! Outstanding information and well worth the read.” Jeff Hurt, @JeffHurt and MidCourse Corrections
The two best alternatives to Twitter as a presentation backchannel
October 28, 2009
Note: This post was updated on 30 October to reflect TodaysMeet introducing Twitter integration.
The advent of the backchannel is a tremendous opportunity for presenters. The backchannel is an online conversation that takes place at the same time as people are talking live. Audience participation didn’t use to scale easily beyond a small group. Now, the backchannel allows every audience member, whatever the size of the group, to be an active participant. However, if you plan to use a backchannel proactively in your presentation, it may be better to use a backchannel tool other than Twitter. This is because:
- Twitter users won’t have to be concerned about overwhelming their followers with a series of presentation-specific tweets.
- Anybody can access and contribute to the backchannel without having to register.
That makes the backchannel more inclusive – no Twitter-divide – and allows the backchannel to become a lot more intimate amongst conference attendees.
