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It happens to public speakers, even the President. It's not stage fright. It's people Twittering in the audience, commenting on your talk even as it's happening. (See Lawmakers Twitter During Obama Address)
In a research report released in February, MarketingVOX shared this in Fewer Keynotes, More Tweeting:
Business leadership conferences feature more podcasts (62%), blogging and Twittering during events (58%), as well as live videocasting (56%).
My first experience the power of the backchannel was last March at the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin. At a heavily attended keynote, Sara Lacy of Business Week interviewed Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. Twittering in the audience grew more and more negative. She wasn't asking the questions the techie audience at SXSW Interactive wanted answered and eventually they let her know in a big way.
Here's how Olivia Mitchell, writing at Pistachio described it in How to Present While People are Twittering.
The most notorious impact of the back channel was at the SXSW ‘08 conference during the Keynote Interview. Sarah Lacy was interviewing Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook. Audience unhappiness with the direction of the interview spread through the back channel and ended up with the audience taking over the interview. Check out Jeremiah Owyang’s account at A groundswell at SXSW 08: How the audience revolted and asserted control.
But if you monitor the back channel, the results can be very different.
Mitchell has a number of excellent suggestions regarding presenting while the audience Twitters. You need to read the full article, but I'll summarize a few points here. I'm jumping straight to the end of the article, where the advice for managing the backchannel while you're presenting is given.
1. Ask a friend or colleague, or a volunteer from the audience to monitor the back channel and interrupt you if there are any questions or comments that need to be addressed. Jeffrey Veen calls this person an ombudsman for the audience.
2. If you can’t find someone to take on this role take breaks - say every 10 mins - to check Twitter. Robert Scoble calls this taking a twitter break. You can combine this with asking the audience for “out-loud” questions as well. It’s good practice to stop for questions throughout your presentation - rather than leaving questions till the end.
3. If you’re courageous and know your content backwards, display the back channel on a screen that everyone (including you) can see. This is potentially distracting for you and has the downside in that the visibility it provides can provoke silly tweets from some (eg: “Hi Mom”). But it does mean that you can react immediately to any issues. Spend some time at the beginning of your presentation explaining to your audience how you will respond to the twitter stream and audience members are more likely to use it responsibly.
Earlier in How to Present While People are Twittering, Pistachio explains the benefits of the backchannel to the audience and how it can be helpful to the speaker.
At Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, you'll find many resources in The Art of the Backchannel at Conferences: Tips, Reflections, and Resources. In addition to a valuable list of resources around this topic, Beth observes,
One of the reflections to come out of 2008's SXSW Conference was for moderators of panels to use Twitter (or back channel tool) to poll the audience upfront and monitor it in real time. Nancy White made an insightful observation, "The new tools give us new ways to transmit the cues and sense where others are, even if we do not coordinate our actions. It’s like a new set of antennae." So, if you're moderating a panel, think of yourself as a giant insect!
As someone who has been a trainer for all these years, one of the things we're trained to do is "read the room." You watch for body language to indicate the level of engagement and whether or not people agree or disagree and encourage them to participate. I also watch for when the energy drops, etc.
It also means that I can't stubbornly soldier on with a lesson plan if it is bombing. One thing I learned many years ago, is that as an instructor you have to be in the moment, focus on your learners more than yourself, and don't be afraid to flush your lesson plan down the toilet if it isn't working.
What Twitter or other back channel does is that it leaves the guess work out it.
