The idea behind this concept is to use Twitter to document all the happenings at a tech conference. Assuming that this were done for a tech conference like NECC, there would be a Twitter user set up for NECC2008 or NECC08. Everyone at the conference who is blogging, taking notes, etc. would be encourage to send a Tweet to that user whenever they hear or see anything of interest. Then anyone who is following that Twitter account, or if they just go to it, can see everything that is posted - links, quotes, comments about speakers, comments about blog posts, photos posted to Flickr, new gadgets, etc.

This is just in the brainstorming stage, but I am throwing it out to the Twitter universe for ideas, comments, etc.

Get back to me at craig.nansen@minot.k12.nd.us and I will include your comments in this document. May switch it to a wiki if needed. If so, the wiki link will be added here with a username and password.

I plan to set up a Twitter account for our state NDATL (North Dakota Association of Technology Leaders) F2F (Face-to-Face) conference in April. I will also create an e-mail account like ndatl@gmail.com or F2F@gmail.com We have about 140 tech leaders that attend this conference, so it will be a good size to test it on.

If they already have a Twitter account we will ask them for it when they register. If they don't have one, we will suggest that they set one up, at least for this event. We will then encourage people to follow NDATL via Twitter. The minute they are a follower, we will receive an e-mail message and we will chose to follow them. Then any comments they make will show up on the MyTweetMap (http://www.mytweetmap ) and any other Twitter tools we chose to use.

I thought we could have more than one large display someplace in the sessions area, and have one or two more Twitter tools running showing the tweets as they are posted. Twitter 100 (http://twitter100.com/ ) is another tool I plan to use. (Got this from a Tweet by Chris Penny.)

Trey (my student programmer who did the mashup) should be able to make a special version of the MyTweetMap that is zoomed in more to show just the state of ND as the tweets pop up.

I want to replicate this for TNT (Teaching and Technology) conference in June. This is our ND tech conference and David Warlick is one of the keynote speakers. David gave me the original idea of using Twitter to follow this conference.

and then..... NECC? And what about the EdubloggerCon the Saturday before NECC?

This is basically a simple idea that can be replicated for any conference. If people are blogging about the conference, posting photos to Flicrk, adding podcasts afterwards, all they need to do is send a @F2F or @NECC (whatever is set up for the conference Twitter name) about their post and everyone following the conference through Twitter will know about it. You won't have to be searching on tag names like NECC_2008 in different search engines to find all the content being posted.

Again, this is just in a concept stage but it seems like it will work.

Craig Nansen
Technology Director
Minot Public Schools
Minot, ND 58701

Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/cnansen
Web site - http://pages.minot.k12.nd.us/