As one of the people who didn’t attend this conference, but might have followed a person that did — I am a Wordpress fan, although not in SF — I’m sure that I would have a different signal-to-noise calculation as a distance follower.

P.S. I discovered this blog post via Friendfeed aggregation of Tim O’Reilly’s Twitter, pointing to his blog post, which shows how convoluted this whole microblogging environment has become.

I said “best case” meaning “this event is likely to show Twitter working very well, and can’t necessarily be extrapolated beyond events that are similar to it.” I think you’d agree that one should be careful about extrapolating unconference data to conferences, which is the point I was making.

I stand by my statement that there are a huge number of snake oil salesman out there saying they know how to teach the “magic of social media”, but when you attend their webinars or read their blog posts, it boils down to very little meaningful content.

That does NOT mean that ALL bloggers and planners don’t know what they’re doing, it just means that there is a social media “gold rush” going on and there are some hucksters out there taking advantage. The presence of bad examples does not imply the absence of good examples.

As for the projection, I clarified that above. I was linking to his list, not commenting on his opinion of it. I realize that the clarification was also at the end of a really long blog post, so you may have missed it, as well.

You say: “You have no idea what we event professionals are talking about regarding social media and took that post out of context. You’re not using social media to listen to us meeting professionals. You’re using it to sell your product. That’s why I don’t trust you.”

The post above barely mentions Pathable. Your comment reads to me like you responded to this without realizing that at the end of my “really long blog post”, I present a conclusion OPPOSITE what you thought I was saying, and now you don’t want to backtrack.

The conclusion of the post is that Twitter provides a lot of supplementary value before, during and after an event. I think you agree with that statement, so I’m having a hard time understanding what your complaint is about.

At the beginning of your post, you made some broad statements that you’ve read your fair share of blog posts about how to use Twitter at events intimating that bloggers & planners don’t know what they’re doing. You make some really hard negative comments about people talking about social media and events.

I don’t appreciate it when people make broad sweeping statements and then profess they know a better way. You also linked to a great meetings and event professional as an example of negative post about projecting Twitter during an event. You have no idea what we event professionals are talking about regarding social media and took that post out of context. You’re not using social media to listen to us meeting professionals. You’re using it to sell your product. That’s why I don’t trust you.

I’m seeing a lot of meetings and events with Twitter discussions that are content-rich and relevant. I don’t think one study of Wordcamp Twitter stream is adequate research to make your claims or adequate research for a Webinar on Social Media and events. Plus I’ve not seen any Webinars on social media and events and since you’re not an event planner, I question why you’re doing one.

We’ve used Wiffiti for two years successfully during our events with our attendees where our audience sends question & answer to the presenter while projected on a screen. We didn’t have the noise as you are describing it. It was extremely successful and our attendees have asked to continue doint it.

Similarly, I virtually attended an event from World Innovation Forum in May that had 20+ official bloggers tweeting and there were more than 30 pages of relevant tweets. There was little noise and these people were doing it right.