How Twitter has changed the conference experience

At the PhoCusWright@ITB Bloggers Summit, Twitter was the hot technology talked about at length as a new window into social networking. Something that has not been covered is the impact of Twitter on the conference experience itself. This was very true the second day of the conference. I sat at the PhoCusWright table behind all the bloggers. Without an exception each had their TweetDeck (or equivalent) on their desktop providing immediate commentary on the show. I participated as well. While Dale Moss spoke on onstage on how Open Skies (BA subsidiary with all BC cabins) will succeed in the market, I questioned his sales pitch with a number of tweets. No longer can a presenter expect to contain the audience feedback to the conference attendees. Twitter has enabled real-time conversation which has changed the rules of a conference and opens up everything said to criticism. Yes there is lot's of hype around Twitter, but one thing is certain, at any public forum a speaker must be sensitive to how his or her presentation is being perceived by the audience which is no longer restricted to attendees but now encompasses all the followers of the twitter user's tweets.