Colleen Morgan, University of California, Berkeley

At first, I was at a loss. Earlier in the week I had stated my intention to twitter the Stanford meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group on my blog, but there I was, standing outside the door of a conference room, wondering what exactly I should write. Twitter is a social networking site that allows users to send messages to their ‘followers’ in short, 140 character-long statements. These statements can be read online or sent automatically as a text message to your cellphone. Out of curiosity I signed up for Twitter in April of 2007, but didn’t use the service much, as I didn’t know anyone else who was using it at the time. Since then, Twitter has grown precipitously, with famous users such as Tina Fey, Oprah Winfrey, Hugh Jackman and President Obama (who has been rather quiet lately) updating their subscribers on subjects ranging from world policy to food preferences–Tina Fey ate a Caramello bar for lunch on February 3rd, in case you were wondering. I find Twitter useful primarily to join in a broader conversation during specific events; Twitter is nearly indispensable during South by Southwest, a large music, film, and interactive conference where I was a guest speaker on an archaeology panel last March. People attending the conference could use hashtags, a method of tagging updates that makes it possible to search for event and topic-specific commentary. I was able to find reactions to our panel discussion by searching for archaeology under the #SXSW hashtag and was happy to see that our discussion of virtual reconstructions and the archive were well-received by the technologists in the audience.
But was this technology ready to come to an archaeology conference? As the social networking coordinator for the World Archaeological Congress, I intended to user Twitter last July at the WAC Congress in Dublin. Unfortunately international calling and texting rates made this impossible, so I was eager to test out the utility closer to home, in the heart of Silicon Valley.

One of the more significant problems I encountered was the lack of cellphone reception in the Lane History Center at Stanford. While this is probably a boon to beleaguered lecturing professors, I had a difficult time sending text messages and sent duplicate messages on more than one occasion. This also caused the batteries in more than one cellphone to die, as most phones were searching for signal all afternoon. Technological problems aside, the social dynamics involved in Twittering an academic conference are not for the weak at heart. More than once I caught an annoyed or dismissive glance as I was tapping away at my phone in the back, trying to be discreet. I’m guessing that this is an endangered reaction, soon to go the way of answering machines and busy signals. Still, it was a palatable sensation, and I couldn’t exactly whisper, “I’m doing very important experimental academic work! It’s really quite cutting edge!” during the session. Not that I’m convinced it is either of those things, but I got a good reaction from the few people I spoke to after the conference who were following the updates.

Finally, I was able to react to the presented material and speakers in a way that was refreshing as a conference attendee. How often do we sit in these conference halls, listening to people read their papers, with no real time for reactions and debate? HASTAC, the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory funded by the NSF and the MacArthur Foundation, recently held an open forum regarding blogging and tweeting academia. In this forum the agency of audiences was introduced by David Toews, a professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Windsor, who cited Goffman’s ‘team’ of communicator and audience in creating meaning. At several of the more technologically-oriented meetings I have attended, there was a live Twitter commentary flowing from the audience next to the speaker, who could engage with specific questions, address general issues, or ignore the feed entirely. While this may not be the future of archaeology conferences, reevaluating the format of our meetings to take advantage of new technology might enliven our annual meetings.

I will probably muster the fortitude to update Twitter during my attendance at upcoming conferences, and UC Berkeley’s 2011 TAG will undoubtedly have its own hashtags, Flickr tags, and Facebook event page. That is, if the world hasn’t moved on by that point.

Here is a link to all 77 of my TAG Twitter updates (http://twitter.com/clmorgan). I refuse to call them ‘Tweets.’