Twitter has changed the way we attend conferences. Prior to social media and Twitter, one needed to attend as many sessions as possible to ensure you could get access to resources and information shared in those sessions. Nowadays, thanks to social media sites like Twitter, presenters and attendees of sessions make it possible for us to attend multiple sessions at the same time. While attending a session by one of my favorite presenters, Adam Bellow, I can be following along with the session that another one of my favorites, Tanya Avrith, is presenting as someone in that room is sharing all of the information and resources via Twitter. The absolute best way to follow all of the Twitter action is to use a web-based tool called Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck allows you to view your Twitter feed in a column view making it super simple to follow along as shown below:
However, because so many people are using Twitter and so many create their own hashtags to follow along with the conversations, there is sometimes some confusion about what hashtag we should be using. The official hashtag for FETC is #FETC but you’ll find that many people are tweeting about the conference and sessions using #FETC17 or #FETC2017. So, how do we ensure that we don’t miss a thing? That’s where Tweetdeck comes in really handy.
In Tweetdeck, we can create a search column using boolean search operators. In our case, we’re going to use the word “or.” With your Tweetdeck window open, click on the magnifying glass in the upper-left corner of the screen:
In the search field, we’ll enter the 3 most commonly used hashtags at FETC separated by the word OR: #FETC OR #FETC17 OR #FETC2017
After pressing ENTER, you’ll see the results of that search. Click on the Add to Column button at the bottom of those results and you’ll see your results show up in a new column in your Tweetdeck
window. This handy little tip will help to ensure you do not miss out on anything at the conference this week. Keep in mind though, #FETC is the official hashtag for the conference so be sure to keep an eye on that and follow @FETC for all official announcements during the show. Have fun!
