In my little series of articles on barcamp and PM Camp (#pmcamp), I described some models for three kinds of sessions in the last instalmnt. Today’s article is about twittering and some behavioural rules directly related to it!
Can you twitter during a barcamp in general and during sessions in particular?
During a PM Camp, you not only can, but actually should (must) twitter. In fact, twittering is a very important part of the Camp. Incidentally, you are also permitted to play on your mobile phone in the middle of a session and to leave the room in order to attend another session.
As a general rule, you have a minimum of one “Twitterwall” at a PM Camp. On it, all tweets written in twitter and marked with the tag of the event will run there in real-time (for example #pmcamp13ber for the next PM Camp in Berlin). Thus, you get a central theme which actually can be taken as first documentation and comments on the entire event. You will know what happens on the PM Camp, how other persons feel and what their experiences and thoughts are.
Naturally, all participants can also take a look at the twitterwall on their individual devices. And they will often see that many persons who are not physically present will actually take part in “real-time” in this way. For instance when I first went to the Dornbirn PM Camp in November 2011, I could not come before noon of the first day. Sitting in the train on my way out, I read the barcamp tweets (#pmcamp) and was absolutely enthusiastic – I was literally driven towards getting to Dornbirn as fast as possible.
Through your own tweets, you also can and should make your own evaluation known to others as soon as possible. In this way, becoming part of the whole is even better guaranteed and you can again inform others. Taken together, all tweets are a nice retrospective report of the event. Later, you will enjoy looking at them and mentally reviving the camp.
Incidentally, there is no “official” documentation of a PM Camp, such as proceedings or the like. This is absolutely intentional! Because the documentation, too, is voluntary. It is organized and determined quasi automatically by the participants. This works quite well and thus you get a thorough multi-media documentation which, above all, is also correctly weighted. It contains text, images and videos and covers everything important, on top of being available centrally on openPM and inter-linked.
Of course, in twitter and on barcamps in general, the same rules should apply as in normal life:
You cannot make others small or hurt them. Personal attacks must be avoided, even if there are times when you are very disappointed. And if it happens that you really did something inexcusable, you have to apologize.
When all is said and done, it is particularly true for the internet and open communities that all you do will reflect upon yourself.
So, please, do also accept weaknesses – and if there is something that annoys you very much, you will just have to leave.
The only thing you cannot tolerate on a PM Camp is intolerance. But intolerance, in particular, is something you should address personally, rather than talk about behind people’s backs.
In this article, I only referred to twittering. Of course, you may also write in facebook or in Google+ during the Camp. You might even wish to create a community there – ideally after coordinating it with the other parties concerned. Twittering is very open and my personal favourite medium, because it is very short and thus will not distract you for too long. And after deducting the day, you have 100 characters left with which you can formulate quite much and with quite a high precision.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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