Today I attended my first conference in a number of years. In fact, I have a feeling that the last one I attended was the Middle Years Schooling Association (MYSA) conference at Jupiters Casino, back in 2007. I was (just) pregnant with my middle child, who is now 4. Wow! That really *was* some time ago!
A lot has changed as conferences go. I read somewhere a couple of years back that “conferences can be awkward – but never for a twitterer”… and I realized the truth of this today.
I shook hand with people that I had interacted with online, but had never met face to face. I laughed as people recognized me from my twitter photo, or my handle (let’s face it, “Ceridwyn” is rather a unique kind of name!) and I felt as though I was more comfortable in a strange situation than I had been at such events in the past.
Then it came session time, and workshop time, and I was finally able to engage in tweeting the conference happenings to my followers… again, something I had never before done, as this was my first conference since I joined twitter. (Come to think of it, twitter didn’t even exist during my last conference! That’s pretty bad, hey, that it’s been so long ‘between drinks’!)
So back to my story, I tweeted away madly and probably bored my followers stupid with my #ipadexplore tweets. I wondered later at the whole ettiquete thing with regard to tweeting a conference. How much is too much? When does it become spam? Or if you don’t tweet enough, is that indicative that the conference is a bit of a dud one? Questions for which I don’t have any answers. But I guess I’ll work it out… especially if I don’t have any followers left after the conference winds up tomorrow!!!
Anyway, long story short, today was a brilliant day. And I’m looking forward to Day 2, tomorrow. And if you’d like a blow-by-blow description, join me following #ipadexplore, or follow me @KRidwyn – I’ll try to tweet as long as the dodgy WIFI holds out!
Til then, dear readers!
