Here at Yum Studio we love twitter and we love events (art, technology, sports etc.) and we love TV. Put these together and you’ve just doubled, sometimes tripled, your entertainment. We have an old vintage projector stand to house the data projector through which we project on a wall adjacent to the tele, add the relevant hashtag to the tweet stream then sit back and enjoy the event through multiple mediums – social, visual, voice and soundtrack.

We’ll pull out this set up for AFL matches, Cricket, Reality Television, Q&A (mostly for the laughs) and of course, the Academy Awards – the Twitter/Televised spectacular of the year.

We head to the odd conference and event during the year when time and funds permit, mostly around learning and development, writing and transmedia.

At some of these events, there’ll be a “twitter wall” where the tweets from delegates are homogenised under an event hashtag into a projected “stream” for all at the physical event to see regardless of their twitter prescence. I’m ambivalent to the twitter wall – I believe it discourages newbies from getting involved in the conversation lest they look publicly foolish, and promotes laziness with trying new things. It heightens the “otherness” of social media for non users too.

So a more sustainable approach can help people get involved. Some events have included a “How to Twitter” session for newcomers providing space and time to play, experiment and find followers. Some of our clients hire our team to do a social broadcast to ensure a great stream.

Those in charge of the Event twitter account can go beyond playing a cyber house keeping role too. Too often we get reminders about coming back from coffee, upcoming sessions, sponsor promotions and door prize ramp ups. Instead they might try flipping out some juicy resources, research, video and pics from the event. A few giveaway games for engagment and participation. A bit of flash mob fun in the break out room.

Twitter is about value addng to those within, and beyond, the event walls.Your punters (those who are there), and your potential punters (not there this year, but next year yeah!)

So next time you’re a conference/event punter and on the tweet try some of these ideas:

• Have an opinion, no-one values free empty tweets
• Find the resource/research the speaker is discussing, if its online post a link with your next tweet
• Capture interesting speaker slides and charts (hold that phone camera steady tiger) with your tweets
• Don’t overdo quoting the speaker as your tweet. Avoid being a repeater station! Instead paraphrase the quote, drop in other relevant hashtags to expand the conversation, ask questions
• Include other users in your tweets using @username, or invite experts outside the event network to enter the discussion in the same way
• Put up counter views, opposition, stir the pot with conflicting opinions, alternative viewpoints and takes on the event presenters position
• Don’t flog your own services, expertises or abilities, allow others to infer your good standing from the quality of information and resources you give back to your industry with your tweets
• Use a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to set up interesting tweets in advance and to follow the event hashtag easily
• Post event create an archive of the more intruiging tweets using a tool like Storify.
• Be cheeky, funny, be yourself and remember… have an OPINION!