Preston Tweetup in action

I thought I’d take the question above as a starting point. A Tweetup is a new concept and it’s something that is really starting to catch-on in some places.

I organised and hosted Preston’s first Tweetup just over a week ago and it was a roaring success. We had nearly 40 people in the room, many of them with wireless enabled laptops and mobiles, all contributing to a discussion on one topic.

The idea for a Tweetup is that instead of having a networking event or discussion where the conversation is completely physical you also have a virtual conversation going on. Bear with me, it does make sense. The structure of the event is an opening preamble and then a topic is discussed by the people in the room – often splitting off into separate groups. This makes it easier to manage.

For example, at the Preston Tweetup we were discussing the Preston Guild in 2012 and how the web can be used in it.

The discussions were flowing around the tables but also on twitter, take a look at the #prestontweetup hashtag feed and you can see all the good stuff that was coming out of people chatting about the topic. Yes, some of it went off on tangents – but that happens with any discussions.

The best thing about the Tweetup was that as an organiser I was getting instant feedback. If there was a problem with something I could pick up on it straight away by watching the tweets. I could also easily collect information after the event and condense it.

This backchannel conversation was incredibly useful and exciting. It also allowed some great interaction between the groups, so that people might take a question asked by one group and explore it and the then fling some more questions back out into the twitter stream for other groups to consider. There was a fantastic collaborative environment at the event.

So, I would really suggest giving a Tweetup a try. You don’t need 40 people there, maybe just 5, but get going with it and see what happens. And if you’re in the education or conference/networking sectors, you need to be on this. Doing it. Making it happen.

I was down in Birmingham to meet up with AMSU colleagues to work on their new web presence, but I’d arranged to arrive a bit earlier than needed and attend the Birmingham City University Tweetup. It was held in Cafe Direct at Birmingham City University Students’ Union – thanks to Jaki Booth (@parboo).

For those not familiar with a Tweetup it’s where users arrange via twitter to meet up at a set location, agree a rough agenda and then have discussions about those topics. All the while, the ideas, discussions, thoughts, arguments, are all documented by those attending via twitter – by simply posting up tweets and tagging them with the Tweetup indicator e.g. #bcutweetup.

If you run search.twitter for #bcutweetup you’ll find some of the things suggested and discussed.

The focus of the discussion while I was there was around digital literacy. Digital literacy is teaching people about the web, the tools and the possibilities – opening their eyes not just to web 2.0 but starting with the basics like using websites to access information.

Those attending seemed committed to improving digital literacy at BCU and not just for students, but for staff as well. There seemed to be a trend that a lot of staff were more digitally literate, or willing to try, than students were.

It’s an interesting concept, digital literacy. I think that web 2.0 has the potential to boost a students employability and also improve a staff member/lecturers ability to work or teach – by sharing more and entering into a dialogue with students that creates a shared knowledgebase.

I’m going to take the concept of digital literacy away and build some thoughts up on it, as I can see it becoming a hot topic over the next few years as broadband access is increased, super fast broadband becomes the norm and particularly in universities – if you’re not digitally literate you are going to struggle.