Tweetybirds

I wasn’t enamored of Twitter before the TravelCom conference in Atlanta, but after witnessing a second noble experiment involving its use, I vote that we just leave it to the kids.

Members of the TravelCom audience had the option of submitting questions to speakers via Twitter. Here’s how it worked: A person seated in, say, the second row used technology to ask a question of a person who was on the stage 20 feet away. A third person seated in the front row read the tweet off her Blackberry to the person on the stage. Because of the 140-character limit on tweet size, the questions sometimes were misunderstood or were simply incomprehensible.

I don’t see the point.

Beyond the utility issue, the Twitter thing encourages Bad Blackberry Behavior. The conference speakers looked out onto a sea of people with their heads bent over their Blackberries or iPhones. Perhaps they were tweeting. More likely they were checking their e-mail or sending text messages. I can’t think of anything more disheartening for a speaker than to have an audience who would rather check e-mail than pay attention to what you are saying.

I told another reporter what I thought about this. He disagreed. “It keeps the conversation going,” he said.

But that’s precisely the problem. If people are speaking on a stage, should audience members carry on a conversation among themselves? Can we not shut up for 20 minutes and just listen?

Just when I thought I’d seen it all, a guy on stage pulled his Blackberry out during a panel discussion and keyed something in. Maybe he was tweeting a question to himself, but I sincerely doubt it.

I think that it’s fun to experiment with new technology, but we shouldn’t fall in love with it for its own sake. Twitter may be the trendy new thing, but is it a good substitute for raising our hands, getting off our butts and asking a question? (What’s that word for the practice of substituting an electronic device for human intercourse?)