Sunday, October 6, 2013

Can you keep up with #ldsconf?

I followed tweets of #ldsconf on Twitter during the last session of General Conference to see if it would enhance my conference experience. It may have been the method I was using, but I felt extremely distracted from the actual talks being given while trying to read what people were tweeting about them. The site I was using to follow the tweets allowed me to control the feed speed, but I found that if I slowed it down too much, the queue of tweets waiting to be displayed would grow quickly, and soon there would be thousands of tweets waiting to be read. Then, if I clicked the button to display everything and bring me up to current I wouldn't have the time to go and read the tweets that I just displayed.  I finally put the speed up as fast as it would go, and just decided to skim the tweets. This didn't actually empty the queue, it just kept it from filling up too fast. Using twitter as a tool to enhance my conference viewing experience was a failure I think. It was amusing, however, to see people tweeting about the fly that kept bothering the speakers. Where I do think it would be useful is in analyzing what resonated with people after the fact, to see what people were excited about. That kind of analysis could be useful to the general authorities who gave the talks in gauging whether their message got across in the way they intended, or not.

3 comments:

  1. Middle-Aged Mormon Man also decided to not follow Twitter or Facebook while watching Conference. Now that I'm older and I feel I can pay better attention, I prefer to just listen to conference, or watch, without reading anything else. I personally feel it enhances my Conference experience.

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  2. This was pretty much my experience as well. Not planning on doing that again.

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  3. I felt like I was not only distracted personally but whenever there was a particularly funny tweet, I would tell my wife about it and distract her too. I probably won't do that again either.

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