Penguin suits, Martha Stewart and bad slides – oh my!
On Monday, I attended TWTRCON 2010 at the Hilton New York (quite the glided hotel, by the way.) It was exciting to finally be in a professional development opportunity that aligns with my current position and what I wish to do in the future, instead of those student affairs conferences that I always felt entirely out of place at (I’m not a fan of the icebreaker). Plus, I was able to meet a great deal of folks I had conversed with for years on Twitter, but hadn’t ever met in person, which is always awesome.
Before I jumped on my bus home, I met a friend for a beer at the new Brewery in Port Authority (convenient for those times that you want to be sedated before taking a Greyhound bus any length of time, which is most of the time) and he excitedly asked me how it was. He’s the more coherent and thought-out version of what I told him over a yummy Apricot Beer:
– Martha Stewart ended up being the perfect keynote speaker. I was quite skeptical of the Queen of Domesticity’s inclusion in a conference on social media, mainly because I’m not a huge fan of her in general. However, her interview was refreshing because she was eagerly unguarded. Nothing she said was groomed. To me, her speaking about navigating online pop culture and social media is a great guide about how to interact with a demographic that is quickly adoring social media: 40-60 year old women. The higher education takeaway of that: most of the parents you program to in higher education are 40-60 year old women.
I did take issue with one of Martha’s points, however. She mentioned that she Tweets all herself – unless she calls her assistant and “dictates” a Tweet to him. “I don’t believe in ghost-tweeting,” she proclaimed. “That’s not what Twitter is for.” Dictating a Tweet over the phone to your assistant is still, in my eyes, using a ghost-tweeter. In what form is that Tweet? Is it a thought? Is it perfectly within 140 characters? Or is she just saying, “Hey Elian, just tweet something about something. I haven’t tweeted in a while”? Any way that dictating comes, I argue that Martha still has a ghost-tweeter. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
– If I’m (or my company) is spending a significant registration fee (above $200) on a conference, don’t waste my time. I loved everything about Twtrcon – great speakers, kept-to schedule, convenient set-up, useful amenities – save for the 20 minutes they wasted interviewing “BP Terry” from “BPGlobalPR.” I think the account will go down as one of the best uses of parody social media in the medium’s young history, but he brought no value to the conference. He wore a penguin suit, stayed in character the whole time, and is not the world’s best standup comic. If he had been willing to chat as the man behind the parody – even if he had to remain disguised – that would be useful to attendees. But as a comedic break, it was not needed, went on much too long, and grated on my nerves.
– Type on slides needed to be 36 point or higher, or get rid of it. This thought is coming from someone who spends her summers creating, editing, troubleshooting and running presentation slideshows (it’s part of my job), so I’m somewhat overly critical on the subject. A few of the case studies were marred by poorly laid out slides and text so small it was unreadable from any angle. The text also blended in with the background. My pro tip: if you must have text laid on top of a picture, make a transparent box in a silvery gray or teal blue and lay in between the picture and text. Volia! – your picture is unmarred and your text is readable. (I’ll make a video showing how to do this better in the coming days.)
Bonus Takeaways, in ellipse format! The Return on Investment debate is bigger than I thought – there was quite the camp at Twtrcon who didn’t understand the need for metrics, and a camp that hungered for new ways, old ways, any ways to measure engagement to report back to bosses….Speaking of metrics, one note I took away from the first panel of the morning was to not overlook the easy to measure metrics – if you run a promotion via Twitter, make sure to actually note how many people take advantage of it. That sometimes can be overlooked….Quote from the location based services session: “What do you already do that is tied to geography? Pinpoint that, and squeeze it further.”….The field of social media is so new that it is inspiring to attend any conference on the subject, because it makes you feel like you could contribute significantly to the discourse of the medium if you merely applied yourself…
(In the coming days, I’ll be writing up a more higher ed specific wrap-up of TWTRCON for the BU Social Media Communicators Blog, which I’ll make sure to link to.)