Use Tweetgrid for Virtual Attendance of VMworld Europe 2009
February 20th, 2009 | 
Author: Not able to attend VMworld Europe 2009 next week like me? Then I am sure you are trying to figure out how to stay in touch with all the happenings in Cannes, France. I think I’ve figured out “an almost real time” way to virtually attend. Of course I’ll be depending on John Troyer’s VMTN Blog and Planet V12N virtualization RSS aggregator, but I’m also counting on Twitter too. The Blogs and RSS feeds should provide great daily/nightly reviews, but the tweets will be instant impressions and opinions from the crowd as they experience the conference, keynotes, sessions and parties.
Normally I use Tweetdeck for following my friends and collecting replies and direct messages, but I’ve found that Tweetgrid is a better alternative for watching an event where there are thousands of tweets from strangers I want to catch. I tested Tweetgrid out last weekend while watching the Daytona 500, and I was pleasantly surprised at the feeling of virtual participation. I think the ultimate event watching feature for me is that Twitpic images show up in the Tweetgrid columns too.
Haven’t joined Twitter yet? Don’t worry you can still use Tweetgrid even if you don’t have a Twitter account.
Give my VMworld Europe 2009 Tweetdeck a try and see what I mean. There is already a lot of chatter to tune into!
For this strategy to really work well for those of us who can’t go, we need the conference attendees to tweet as much as possible. So, if you are going please load your phones and notebooks with the Twitter client of your choice and start micro blogging! Try to include “vmworld” as a keyword or hashtag in your tweets so we can follow you.
Here’s some extra tips for using Tweetgrid to watch VMworld Europe 2009:
Bookmark and start with my VMworld Tweetgrid to catch all tweets with VMworld and Cannes as well as Twitpics with the same keywords.
Add extra columns to the grid for new searches when news breaks or a hot topic flares up. You can add vertical columns or a second row. Tweetgrid has preset formats from the drop box.
If you have a Twitter account already use the settings in one of the extra columns for your Friends timeline.
Let me know if you have any other suggestions for using Tweetgrid or if there is another tool you will be counting on!
This post is syndicated and originally appeared at VMwareUnderground.com titled
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