Stigmergic Web

Today was the day that I drank the [Twitter](http://twitter.com) kool-aid. I have moved from [Stage 2](http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/04/26/stage-2-i-still-dont-get-it/) to Stage 6 (at least) in Doc Levine’s description of the [epidemiology of Twitterosis](http://cogdogblog.com/2007/04/26/splj-20/).

I spent (most of) my day attending the [TLt 2007 conference](http://www.tlt-itsummit2007.ca/) in Saskatoon, which is about a 90 minute drive from home. During the drive, I listened to the audio recording of Brian, D’Arcy and Alan’s _[Open, Connected, Social](http://www.darcynorman.net/2007/04/27/open-connected-social-the-movie)_ presentation. They are all on my Twitter friends list, a detail that becomes important later in my story.

I’ve blogged conferences in the past, but today I wanted to try Twittering the conference instead. I did this for Ian Juke’s keynote, but [Alec](http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros) managed to coerce me into co-presenting with him in his podcasting session (OK – he asked me and I said yes, but knowing my passion to talk about podcasting makes asking akin to coercion). He also asked [Heather](http://www.mctoonish.com/blog/) and I into co-presenting with him on [Free, Open and Collaborative Processes and Tools for the Creation of Digital Content Related to Course Development](http://www.tlt-itsummit2007.ca/program/#36).

_Note – the following interactions are archived on [my Twitter favourites page](http://twitter.com/robwall/favorites); you may refer to it for the full, non-paraphrased conversation_.

[Dean](http://ideasandthoughts.org/) walked into the room, so Alec invited him to join us as well. I twittered the session that I was involved in presenting whenever Alec was talking. Dean was sitting beside me, twittering about watching me twitter. As I was describing Alec’s presentation, Brian added his support for our presentation. Dean twittered the address for [Alec's open thinking wiki](http://couros.wikispaces.com/openthinking). Brian added a link to the wiki **as Alec was presenting**. At about the same time, D’Arcy twittered about a greasemonkey script that turned a [MediaWiki](http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki) page into an [S5 presentation](http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/). I passed the URL for the script along to Alec via Skype while he was presenting. (_I was also adding commentary and suggestions to Alec via Skype providing a live backchannel for the presentation_).

A few hours later, [Alan wrote about Twitter](http://cogdogblog.com/2007/05/01/tweety-bird/) in his blog. He cited our addition of the mediawiki-s5 script to a presentation as it was happening:

> you might chalk this up to the rabid swarming of techno geeks, but for little effort, not stuffing people with email, twitter can generate action. All it takes is a nudge, some contacts …

Dean wrote in his blog about our earlier Twitter synergy, including a link to Alan’s post describing it. Just a short while ago, [D'Arcy tweaked the wikipedia-s5 script](http://www.darcynorman.net/files/wikipediapresentation.user.js) and loaded it up on his server. He then announced it on Twitter, but not (yet?) on his blog. I have now installed the newly revised script, and I’m going to check with Alec about re-writing his wiki in a MediaWiki so it can be viewed/presented as an S5 presentation.

Thus my twitter mediated day comes to an end. I am still somewhat gobsmacked by the way that Brian and D’Arcy (and Alan, in retrospect) were able to **become co-presenters** as mediated by Twitter. A posse-amigos co-presentation, if you want to look at it that way. Cool – very, very cool!