Twitter

[Cat]

I'm trying to hit all the really important topics.

Do I *really* need a twitter account to follow all the happenings at NIWeek?? I've resisted it since I really don't think, as much as my friends love me, that every time I powder my nose, burp, cough, etc, they really want to know.

[crelf]

It's true that there are plenty of twitter accounts that announce little more than what people are having for lunch. That said, there are also a lot of facebook profiles, blogs, and emails that do the same thing, so I guess your question "should I get a twitter account" is similar to "should I get an email account" Like twitter, when email first became widespread, it too was mostly trivia and garbage (some might argue that it still is), but thankfully you don't have to get emails from everyone - jut like twitter: you only "follow" the accounts that you're interested in.

So, you don't *need* to get a twitter account to experience NI-Week, but I think having one and following the right twitterers sure enhances it. The @lavag is open to all LAVA administrators, so I expect several of them to tweet cool sessions, lunch meet-ups, socialising options, etc. I know I'll vertainly be tweeting from the convention center and beyond Another account yo umight want to follow is @niweek

[Cat]

It's true that there are plenty of twitter accounts that announce little more than what people are having for lunch. That said, there are also a lot of facebook profiles, blogs, and emails that do the same thing, so I guess your question "should I get a twitter account" is similar to "should I get an email account"

[...]

So, you don't *need* to get a twitter account to experience NI-Week, but I think having one and following the right twitterers sure enhances it.

You're right, as with most of these things, it's all in the way you use it. I don't generally email everyone in my address book all at the same time. And my view of Facebook is as being much more of a give-and-take than Twitter. Dialogue vs. monologue. Twitter is perfect for the "It's all about me" generation (insert crotchety old lady comment about those darn kids). But maybe that's just my perception.

Anywho, my teenager is actually home for a couple days. I'm sure she'll be ecstatic to set up a Twitter account for me. And she was muttering something about "altering" my new "super-geeky" LAVA t-shirt...

[Fab]

Cat,

I was wondering the same thing. Please, post back about your experience with Twitter... see if I finally join everyone else ... It has been hard enough for me to move from my "lurker" status to starting to finally post on LAVA.

Fab

[Christian_L]

I consider Twitter like RSS. I subscribe to the feeds (people) that I'm interested in hearing from/about. When someone posts a tweet they are not directing it at you, but at their feed. And it's up to you whether you subscribe to that feed or not. I tend to follow more organizations, magazines, etc. than private individuals so Twitter does become a customized news feed for me.

I do frequently Follow and Unfollow people based on what they are posting and whether I'm interested. If someone tweets too much about their food and being at happy hour I unfollow. I look for a good signal to noise ratio from the people I follow. In some cases I may decide to follow someone for a given time period (like NIWeek) and not follow them the rest of the year.

http://twitter.com/cloew

[pallen]

Although I don't use it all the time, I really like it when I want to get "right now" information about something. Being here at the office, following the #NIWeek and #labview tweets has been interesting.