The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Chennai’s first ever Twitter Unconference

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Tuesday, Jun 23, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Chennai’s first ever Twitter Unconference

Sruthi Krishnan

CHENNAI: A part of their lives is scripted online, 140 characters at a time. Most are better known by the names they have chosen – ‘adapaavi,’ ‘fossiloflife’ and thenalirama, just to name a few. And more than 100 such ‘Tweeple’, their chosen collective noun, met at Photon Towers in Karapakkam on Sunday for Chennai’s first ever Twitter Unconference – Buzz140. The event was organised by the Knowledge Foundation, which organised events such as Proto.in and Blogcamp.

For those who are stymied by the lingo, here are some quick references. Unconference is a meet where the participants drive the proceedings. Together, they choose who can speak and on what topics they would like to listen to.

If you had attended the conference, you would have been brought to speed on what Twitter is, just as Radhika Radhakrishnan, a student of MA Broadcast and Communication, discovered. “I have been on Twitter for more than a month, but I didn’t know much about it,” she said.

Twitter is an online messaging service. You can sign on it just as you would for an email account. The founders of Twitter had started it as a messaging service by which they could inform their friends about the answer to one question – “What are you doing right now.” And there is just one rule – the answer has to be within 140 characters. So, how do you share information packed in 140 characters? This was the chosen theme of Buzz 140. “The idea was to find out various ways of using 140 characters,” said P.C. Samyukta, a student of history, who also runs an online magazine Chai Kadai (http://chaikadai.wordpress.

com).

But Twitter has come a long way from what its creator thought it would be. It is not just real-time updates on what someone did waiting for their coffee to cool.

“It is one of the best and fastest places to get information,” said Sathyanarain, who works at findnearyou.com. For the latest news, he said he preferred Twitter, citing the recent Air France flight crash which was reported on Twitter even before the mainstream media caught on.

And like any other social networking site, it is a place where you can build friends. “You must have conversations,” said S.N. Varun, an advertising professional.

Only by talking to people, he said, you can understand the real value of Twitter. “I have friends on Facebook, but I converse with them through Twitter,” he says explaining why the 140-character stream is a medium of choice to keep in touch.

If you are particular that you do not want an update every time your friend decides to swat a fly, there are options you can use. “There are tools such as Filter that can help you filter out unwanted updates,” said R. Ranjani, who graduated recently. But is Twitter another passing fancy that will fade when the next fad hits town? “No…,” said all the Tweeple. The world is just finding out ways to use this messaging service, they said. And the enthusiasm in Chennai shows that the southern city will play an active role.

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