Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Time magazine on Twitter

Time magazine joins the Twitter hype by doing a nice cover story. A really nice excerpt from the article below showcasing Twitter at its (current) coolest (who knows where Twitter will go in the future):

The Open Conversation
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Earlier this year I attended a daylong conference in Manhattan devoted to education reform. Called Hacking Education, it was a small, private affair: 40-odd educators, entrepreneurs, scholars, philanthropists and venture capitalists, all engaged in a sprawling six-hour conversation about the future of schools. Twenty years ago, the ideas exchanged in that conversation would have been confined to the minds of the participants. Ten years ago, a transcript might have been published weeks or months later on the Web. Five years ago, a handful of participants might have blogged about their experiences after the fact. (See the top 10 celebrity Twitter feeds.)
But this event was happening in 2009, so trailing behind the real-time, real-world conversation was an equally real-time conversation on Twitter. At the outset of the conference, our hosts announced that anyone who wanted to post live commentary about the event via Twitter should include the word #hackedu in his 140 characters. In the room, a large display screen showed a running feed of tweets. Then we all started talking, and as we did, a shadow conversation unfolded on the screen: summaries of someone’s argument, the occasional joke, suggested links for further reading. At one point, a brief argument flared up between two participants in the room — a tense back-and-forth that transpired silently on the screen as the rest of us conversed in friendly tones.
At first, all these tweets came from inside the room and were created exclusively by conference participants tapping away on their laptops or BlackBerrys. But within half an hour or so, word began to seep out into the Twittersphere that an interesting conversation about the future of schools was happening at #hackedu. A few tweets appeared on the screen from strangers announcing that they were following the #hackedu thread. Then others joined the conversation, adding their observations or proposing topics for further exploration. A few experts grumbled publicly about how they hadn’t been invited to the conference. Back in the room, we pulled interesting ideas and questions from the screen and integrated them into our face-to-face conversation.
When the conference wrapped up at the end of the day, there was a public record of hundreds of tweets documenting the conversation. And the conversation continued — if you search Twitter for #hackedu, you’ll find dozens of new comments posted over the past few weeks, even though the conference happened in early March.
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PS: I read this article in the print edition of Time (yes, there is such a thing as a print edition) and then tried to find it online. I found the above excerpt at a couple of other sites, but Time magazine didn't feature in the Google search results list.

Sign of the time(s) ?

3 comments:

VK said...

and a very nice article by Jack Welch on why he twitters:

http://is.gd/Xqa6

Anonymous said...

My top 3 sites that should be removed from the internet:
1. Linked In
2. Face Book
3. Twitter

Arvind

Arvind said...

Now heres a quiz question. Who taught Bruce Lee how to teach martial arts?

Answer: Jiddu Krishnamurti. Heres the link:
http://www.defend.net/deluxeforums/jeet-kune-do-discussion-forum/15242-jiddu-krishnamurti-bruce-lee.html