In the focus of the study are knowledge workers, the multiple roles they take on during their regular work and the actions they perform during accomplishing their work. A knowledge worker is anyone who develops or uses knowledge in his or her daily working tasks. Furthermore we try to associate application types with the knowledge actions.

We would like to ask you for your participation in the study which will take approximately 25 minutes. Your participation is anonymous and all answers will be treated confidentially.

You can access the survey at http://bit.ly/KWRStudy

Please feel free to forward the link to the survey to your colleagues, retweet or blog about this call for participation.I count on the power of my social network…

We will keep you updated about the results of the study.

If you only could follow one person on Twitter, who would that be?

I gave my answer (which I cannot tell you here…) and thought it would be a cool thing to explore with a wider public. That’s why I put up a really simple questionnaire over at Google Spreadsheets and would be really happy if you could distribute it to your fellow Tweeple.

So does the application possibility strongly depends on the people at the conference and the type of official incorporation in the conference communication?!

Here are some statistical data and voices from the attendees of the TNC2009:

Did you have a Twitter account before the TNC 2009 conference?

What was your main reason to use Twitter during the TNC 2009 conference? (multiple selections allowed)

Do you think Twitter encouraged the discussion of topics presented during the TNC 2009 conference?

Please tell us why you think Twitter encouraged the discussion of topics during the TNC 2009 conference?

• 1. Getting a second opinion on stuff you hear, while hearing it. 2. Catching stuff that you’d have missed otherwise due to ignorance, bad hearing, noisy neighbours or such.
• Allowed for parallel discussions
• Because I didn’t twitter myself (just didn’t notice the track) but heard there was noticeable usage I assume encourage of discussion. I would have used it if I would have been aware of the track
• brings in participants from outside the conference, easy way to rate other people’s reactions that isn’t possible during short question times in sessions.
• Easy way to send clear and potentially discussion-provoking statements
• For me (in my case) twitter was useful because it gave me the possibility of discussing with my collegues about the topics we suposed were most interesting to us.
• It can be hard to find people physically at the conference in coffee breaks so you discuss with people in real time, but not in person.
• It can do a more interactive relation between the speaker and attendant.
• It was a back-channel for less formal discussion and occaisionally critical/dissenting views that aren’t readily expressed in the context of the session itself
• Tweets make it possible to make brief comments about what is happening right now, and to make topical, focused comments – and it makes it possible for others to get different perspectives on presentations and current topics.

Please tell us why you don’t think Twitter encouraged the discussion of topics during the TNC 2009 conference.

• A discussion should not take place on two different places.
• Not enough delegates were on twitter
• It was not even discussed among the attendees I spoke with.
• the conference is about meeting people – not about reading messages.
• TNC is a small conference. I can talk to each other and there is enough time for questions in the meetings.to send mails I must not travel to Malaga. “networking the networkers” does not mean: send mails!
• Too few people tweeting or following.

Please rate these communication channels according to your frequence of use during the TNC 2009 conference.

In your opinion, what is the added value of tweeting in conferences?

• virtually  meeting new people, added context to the presentations, feedback and evaluation from other attendees
• actually it is at least for some a way to give feed-back
• Another collaboration platform
• Getting hints on good presentations and novel ideas from people you know and trust. Sharing ideas. Learning about things “in real time”.
• Getting to know people interested in the same topics, sharing one’s opinion. Receiving hints about what s going on in other parallel sessions.
• Having fun
• identifying potential starting points of discussions
• In general, as part of backchannel discussion. At this particular conference, sharing news from the conf with people not attending in person.
• It is fast and simple way to communicate.
• low-threshold way of sharing instant impressions
• near real time communication (in the middle between sync and async)
• Quick and easy way to share ideas and raise issues during the conference.
• Quick, easy backchannel. Means of keeping track of other parallel sessions. Permanent record of thoughts and ideas.
• Rapid up-to-date info. Making contact with other ppl. Some fun (i.e. jokes), giving an informal contact.
• short and immediate exchange of thoughts and remarks
• Spontaneous opinion sharing without disrupting by talking.
• spontaneously expressing opinions, ideas, questions
• telling someone something in a quicker way than email during sessions (such as comments, requests, and so on)

In your opinion, what are disadvantages of using Twitter in conferences?

• Twitter is little bit messy. You have to follow right persons or anyone have to remember use those search tags like #tnc2009.
• Too much typing, too little following the programme.
• There is already so much multi-tasking and so many distractions during a conference that it is hard to listen to what people are saying.  Twitter adds to the noise.
• The need to learn a new tool
• Not enough of the delegates were on twitter.
• Might be distracting on some people.  I personally don’t think I suffer that much.
• It encourages people to make inconsequential remarks of short shelf-life rather than listening to the speaker who is talking.
• May distract attention to presentations
• during sessions pleople keep writing on their laptop. I know of conferences in which the organizers blocked wi-fi in session rooms.
• Could reduce the amount of direct interactions for those who are present in the conference.
• Could distract from potentially more productive means of communication. Although for Twitter, the level of distraction is probably lower than for other media for side conversations.
• anaouthe activity people deal with instead of personal communication

With the survey we try to find out which means of communication are useful in specific situations of the development process, which means of communication are really used and how they support the problem solving in a team.

If you and your team are interested in taking part in the survey please contact me and I will send you a link to the survey together with a token that identifies your team. Of course we will share the results of the survey as soon as we have them here on the blog.

A note on privacy:
The survey will be an anonymous one. The record kept of your survey responses will not contain any identifying information about you unless a specific question in the survey will ask for this.

I’m looking forward to the responses of your conference attendees.

We plan to run our survey at other conferences in 2009 to obtain more data we can evaluate and make general statements on how to apply Microblogging at conferences.

If you use Twitter at your conference (or workshop) please let us know. We are looking for some survey mentors that state themself responsible for spreading the word about the survey at a specific conference. We would prepare the survey and send you a link, which you should distribute amongst the attendees. If you are interested, just let me know.

Edit: In the meantime there are still some more reviews of our article available. Thx for your feedback. See reviews here and here and here

Meanwhile we put up surveys for several conferences and get the first answers:

• Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2008 in Berlin
• Handheld Learning 2008 in London
• ECTEL 2008 in Maastricht
• Online Educa 2008 in Berlin
• E-LEARN 2008 in Las Vegas
• LeWeb ’08 in Paris