As mentioned in the last post, I was considering using Twitter to give my updates when I was at the Fall Conference.  Turns out that the conference committee was encouraging using the social media tool, asking us to use the hashtag #TMD30 when we send our “tweets” (click here for the most recent tweets).  During the conference, the volunteer desk sometimes had a display up that showed up-to-the-minute tweets, such as this one which I took a picture of from my phone.

Well as you see from this picture, that was what I did for a significant time at the conference.  Anything that I observed that was worth mentioning in my view gets posted.  It made an otherwise uneventful conference fun, and I admit that it made me want to get back to the conference site early Saturday morning instead of sleeping in.  Of course I got to meet with many old friends and meet some new ones, a few even mentioned that they read this blog.  The events I attended were OK, but they weren’t much different from past conferences I attended.

What is great about using Twitter is that I was able to enter what I feel like without any interference from others, without being part of someone else’s agenda.  That was a major reason why I’m no longer involved in District 30 and why I turned down being the Evaluation Contest chair for this conference as there are many in leadership here who are more concerned about their view of the world than letting those who volunteer at the event do their jobs and grow from it.  I went as far as pushing the limits of what I write by referring to the business meeting as the “bs meeting” (I admit it was intentional and not use it as an abbreviation) and mention the first sentence of this paragraph as my parting shot before I left the conference.  Not sure if the conference committee and D30 officers read what I wrote, they may be too politically correct to not want me to do this again or restrict or drop using Twitter, but it is worth a try.

On the other hand if more Toastmaster members are aware of using Twitter, more could check out the feed when they’re unable to be there.  They can even get an instant announcement as to who was a contest winner, which I did for Friday’s Evaluation Contest (too bad no one put one for the Humorous Speech Contest in my absence).  Someone in the volunteer desk mentioned it can be a great way to tell if there were concerns or issues about the conference so the committee can learn from them, such examples that I entered include:

strange they’re asking someone from each 7-officer trained club to go up and shake the LGET’s hand and leave the stage w/ nothing!

and

main room seemed dead during lunch and c&l now it is packed for main educ session with the ID!

I was excited on using Twitter to report from the conference, even forward my tweets to my Facebook page.  Only four others used it during this conference, if there is more publicity on it perhaps we can get more to tweet in the 2010 Spring Conference.