I apologize to you, the few people who read this.  I have some of the #140conf posts as drafts; hopefully I’ll be able to finish and publish them in the coming weeks.

At any rate, there were two events that made me consider what it means to be a fictional presence on social media during #140conf.  The first was a panel on Twitter and Mad Men; the second was a talk by  Callie Kimball (@calindrome) on “The arts as a shared experience on Twitter.”  Now, I’ve never seen Mad Men the TV show (although I am a fan of the opening sequence).  The Mad Men tweeters are individuals who tweet as characters from the show, while Ms. Kimball is a playwright and NBC Universal project manager.  Now when you think about it, this is two separate approaches to fantasy on Twitter (perhaps non-reality would be a better term).  In the case of Mad Men, Twitter is the stage they use to assemble a work that weaves together the in-universe reality of the television show with the twitterverse.  On the other hand, playwrights like Ms. Kimball tend to use Twitter to raise awareness of their work, or to provide 140 character pieces of material.  These playwrights are in a sense the inverse of the Mad Men tweeters, as they step outside their physical reality to tweet about their projects.

Now there is also a third kind of fictional tweeter – the truly fictional, existing in his/her own pocket universe, kind.  Unlike @FrankAdMan, @BeverlyDarling, and the rest of the Mad Men tweeters, these accounts may not interact with those outside of their reality; instead, they allow the twitterverse to peek in and see what is going on.  I don’t have much in the way of evidence for this kind of phenomenon.  In fact, I have just one example – @twit_play.  The name of the account explains it all.  It’s a two month long play on Twitter written by Jeremy Gable, and it’s technically it’s four accounts.  @danemainman, @nikopolis, @lesleopard, and @ccmcalis have been having a running conversation with each other, one that I could actually see as some kind of time warped theatrical experience.  This experiment has only been going on for 11 days, but so far the characters have yet to “speak” to anyone outside of their foursome.  For me, the interesting part of this is that there have been times when I have seen an @twit_play  tweet and wanted to respond.  To engage this fictional character in conversation.  So what does that say about the power the fantasy holds if it is able to draw me into its reality?  To make me believe, even if just for a second, that the person represented in the account is actually alive somewhere, sitting at their computer or on their phone, talking to the internet.  And to make me want to respond to them, just as I would to someone I knew on Twitter who isn’t following a script.

I wish to approach this by discussing the usage of social media by the UK government (see how these can be tangential now? It’ll make sense by the end, I promise).  My interest in this stems from two sources.  The first is a comparative politics class I took my freshman year of college; it provided me not just with an interesting look at the governments of other countries but also equipped me with the beginning of a framework for comparative analysis (which makes sense I suppose).  The second is my interest in the convergence of new media and politics; I actually wrote my final paper for one of my last classes senior year on “Networked Publics: A Look at Social Media and Government.”  The paper was a comparative analysis of the ways in which the US, UK and Japanese governments use social media.  You can read the entire thing on Scribd if you’d like.  Up to you.

Anyway, my interest in the UK government’s utilization of social media came about after stumbling upon the tweets of @DowningStreet, which is the official stream of the Prime Minister’s office.  To me, No10 admin (as the tweeter refers to him/herself) provides access into the daily routine of an office six time zones ahead, one which has no political responsibility to me.

So it was great then to have a panel at #140conf called “Across the pond – UK Media Panel.”  Here’s a screenshot from the schedule:

The panel was really quite interesting, and during it I stared to wonder.  How has the UK government’s willingness to embrace social media changed the way the media interacts with the government?  Has it led to the public cutting out the middle man that is mass media in exchange for creating networks and starting conversations directly with individuals?  I was curious.

Sadly I was unable to ask my question during the panel, in part because I was sitting pretty far in the back and the lights were kind of dim (nobody saw me raise my hand!).  But I was able to track down @radiokate after the panel.  (By the way, Kate runs something called BBC Save Our Sounds aka @BBC_SOS, a project dedicated to building an interactive aural map of the world.  It’s pretty great – check it out).  Kate was able to redirect me to @media140, or Ande Gregson.  I’d actually been following his tweets for a little bit, and he was gracious enough to take a few minutes to answer my question.

Now I won’t publish his answer, partly because I don’t remember it word for word and I don’t want to put words in his mouth.  But the impression that I received from my conversation with him was that we must consider that the perception of what we see on Twitter doesn’t necessarily reflect the truth.  As an outside observer, I don’t see how news gets distributed locally; @DowningStreet may provide a solid stream for users to read, but I don’t truly know what the dynamics of the situation are as I don’t regularly interact in that space.  It may be that the stream is used by journalists and bloggers as another source of data open to interpretation, one which allows them to obtain new information and analyze it for redistribution.  Or it could be read by the public.  Or both.  I don’t really know.

This in turn led me to consider whether or not I am capable of making inferences based just upon observations of Twitter users.  Just because I follow @DowningStreet, am I qualified to critique or interrupt conversations, events or trends taking place involving him?  Or is reading one slice of a Twitter conversation not enough to qualify me to comment on what is going on?

I don’t really know, but I’m curious as to what you think of this.  Feel free to tweet at me or comment below!  And don’t forget to check back tomorrow for the second reflection.

I want to begin by thanking Jeff and the “cast of characters” who spoke during the conference.  They are an amazing bunch of people who were gracious enough to take the time, effort, energy, and mental fortitude to put together a presentation and get up on stage in front of everyone.  So thank you!  It was quite an interesting experience to hear everyone speak, regardless of whether or not a) I’d ever heard of them before the conference or b) they were talking about something that I knew absolutely nothing about.

Overall I thought #140conf was quite impressive.  Now I’ve never been to an interactive media conference before, so I didn’t really know what to expect.  And it’s not like there were that many people who were my age (21) or with my background (recent college grad) there – at least from what I saw.  I apologize if I missed you, my peers (if you are my peer; if you aren’t, I’m still sorry I missed meeting you).  I must admit that I was a bit overwhelmed by the people there – I don’t regularly hang out with venture capitalists, startups, multi-platinum musicians, and the like.  It’s kind of a daunting task for someone whose closest experience to working at a startup was creating a social media venture as a school project.  (My resulting awkwardness also explains why floating somewhere on the Internet there is probably a picture of me grimacing awkwardly at having to pose for a picture while sitting on a green chaise lounge by myself.  Sigh.)  But I did meet some cool people (and continue to meet some more on Twitter), so not all hope is lost for me in the networking world I suppose.

Anyway, the conference was a lot of fun at the same time.  It was a great way to get exposed to new ideas and Twitter users, while also getting a snapshot into this rather interesting community that is focused on social media and its uses.  And while we were two stories underground with occasionally not so great wifi, I think that the conference did a great job setting out to do what it intended, which was to “explore ‘the effects of twitter on: Celebrity, “The Media”, Advertising and (maybe) Politics.’”  Was it perfect?  No.  But I do think that it broadened my Twitter horizons (twizons?).  The conference exposed me to people, ideas and strategies that were outside of my Twitter sphere before today.  And it really got me thinking about the ways in which I use social media now and what I could do differently.

Now #140conf was over 18 hours of panels.  They covered every aspect of Twitter you could think of, including ones that I, to be frank, didn’t have any interest in.  And there was the bit where I got annoyed at everyone telling me how to use Twitter (as I personally think that Twitter is whatever you want to do with it).  But that’s not really what I want to talk about.  What I really want to talk about are the ideas from the conference, which I can’t do in this one entry.  So I’m going to try something different.  In the month and a half I’ve had this blog up, I’ve published 16 posts.  That’s approximately 2.667 posts per week or 0.381 posts per day.  Not exactly ideal.  Instead of my semi-regular update pattern, I’m going to try and post one entry per day for the next seven days about #140conf – and I plan on writing them the same day I post them, so this ought to be interesting.  There were a ton of panels, and I won’t be able to cover them all, but I’m going to try and do my best to reflect about what I was most interested in.  So check back over the course of the week as I write and post (it’ll also give both you and me time to review the video from the conference, as well as some of the speakers’ slides on slideshare).

Oh.  Also, if you think you know someone who should speak at the next #140conf, Jeff Pulver is holding an open casting call for #140conf: LA and #140conf: London.  So go and tweet your nomination to #140conf!  Or for that matter, tweet your thoughts about my thoughts, or don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!

EDIT: The badge no longer works due to changes at the 140conf website.  Sorry folks.

So here it is:

For kicks, I decided to write a Twitter version that’s 140 characters long:

Jeff-

Because I graduated from college today and think that one day Twitter is going to revolutionize the way I’ll work.

Thanks,

Jed Cohen

And finally, my tweet linking to this post (for bonus points apparently).