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The whole boring story of why Twitter should be a part of your life

First... Some of you have probably heard of flashmobbing. Folks at some tech conferences are doing this - but not just to hit a bar. They do it to organize around a topic. Someone is hacking a greasemonkey script to do something or other, several others gather around, and suddenly it's a session with 50 people in attendance - all generated via texting and twitter.

My head spins.

Second... I've been going to computer user group meetings since the early 80s - I was nearly a founding member of the IBM PC users group in Cincinnati back in 82 or thereabouts. And going to conferences just about as long.

And these are all 'formal' affairs - have been forever. The social meme has been the same for as long as I remember. You go, listen to a presentation, take some notes. If you're socially inept, or just plain rude, you talk with the person next to you or sit in the back with your notebook open, answering email offline. A few years ago, surfing the Web via the wireless connection the venue has in place while ignoring the speaker became the new rude.

Not anymore.

I've been going to a new user group meeting (new to me, they've been around for a couple of years) for six months or so. Unlike the greybeards at my LUG, there are a wide range of folks - a fair number of college kids, lots of 20somethings, and then a smattering of others in the 30s and beyond.

Most don't have families, most do have 'real jobs'. All are interested in the Web, as a producer somehow. A lot of them look at 'coders' as a breed apart. Funny.

OK, here's the thing. So there's a guy up front talking about some topic. Everyone in attendance has a notebook. No surprise there. Everyone is surfing the Web while the guy is talking. A bit disconcerting. They're also IMing each other. More disconcerting. And they're in IRC. And twittering.

This is getting disconcerting to the point of nauseating. I'm not done.

They're taking pictures and posting them - IRT - to Flicker.

It gets worse.

Someone has set up a camera, not to videotape the presentation, but to ustream it. (Think of ustream as a live podcast.) And people IN THE ROOM are watching the presentation ON THEIR COMPUTER via ustream, INSTEAD of watching the presenter. And others have set up THEIR web cams pointed at attendees, and are watching others watching the presentation on their computer.

And they're surfing, IMing, twittering, Flickering, IRCing at the same time.

I'm going insane.

As a friend of mine said, "with this group, ADD is not a problem. It's a requirement."

We're not done.

Someone has opened an IRC channel for the folks in the room, and so everyone is chatting back and forth - usually about what time the pizza is going to arrive but also making snarky comments about the presentation while it's going on - how boring the speaker is or what an idiot they are if they make a mistake.

AND THEY"RE PROJECTING THE CHAT STREAM ON A SCREEN BEHIND THE SPEAKER.

I feel like I'm from a different planet.

The reason I bring this up is... well, actually, I just want to complain that this is the next generation, and I don't get it. I just want the damn kids to get off my lawn. And stop driving so fast. And turn down that music, for god's sake!!!!!

Well, actually, I also bring this up because... twitter is the only way to communicate with this group. They don't have a mailing list or a web site or anything. All the meetings are organized and announced via twitter and IRC and Facebook and Flicker. I asked someone for their email address and they just looked at me. "Email. How quaint. I suppose you have a typewriter at home, too."

So I've been forced to use twitter. (I haven't admitted this to the Mother of My Immortality, much less the Immortality themselves.) And... slowly, I'm getting addicted. Messages are limited to 140 characters, which means one must choose one's words carefully and judiciously. It's an interesting intellectual exercise to convey the entirety of one's thought (for me, usually a complaint about my physical deterioration or the stupidity of the programming language I'm using) in that limited space.

After three months of twittering, here are some random thoughts.

1. I like the limit of 140 characters. Forces me to communicate succinctly and compellingly. None of these 3 page emails.

2. I suspect that twitter will be more compelling for independents than for corporate folks. I look at it as a 'water cooler' type of mechanism, but without the drudgery of email or mailing lists or chat rooms. Here's an example.

Remember back when you were in college and a lot of your conversations were short exchanges w/ friends? "Hey, did you hear Cahill got a ZERO on his DiffEq midterm!" "Gonna go drinking with us tomorrow night?" "I just smoked Professor Carlson in racquetball!" "Whoa, the new Civil Engineering secretary is wearing a sweater you have GOT to see." (I went to an all-male engineering school.)

That sort of thing. Or if you're at work at a decent place, same thing. You keep up with your friends and associates on a day to day basis via short messages, not long heartfelt conversations.

Twitter allows you to do that with geographically independent associates. Just a 'checking in' type of thing. Post when you want. Read when you want.

I know that Ted's enjoying his 3 days of summer while his dogs are getting all muddy and his server room is getting all wet. And Ed can't sleep. And Pete has been waiting for his new camera tripod for a week. And Mike just shipped a new SuSE book. And Chad and Amy are expecting.

And.... if you'd been following me, you'd know I can't swim worth a crap. But I know Project Hooks, XML and SNMP better than any of my kids, that I just finished chapter 5 of a new book, and that my Windows box - used only for VFP - has 27 copies of msvcr71.dll.

These aren't worthy of an email, but allows me to keep up with them, and vice versa.

But it took me about two years to find out that another pair of friends had a baby. THAT'S a crime. (That it took me that long, not that they are now 3.)

3. If you've made it this far, you'll know that some mailing lists work a lot like this. For instance, on one list I'm subscribed to, everyone knows that Karl didn't crack 40 in his last 10K /sigh/, that Ian busted a wheel last fall, that you don't want to sit next to DanH when he flies to Europe, that Lynn lives too far from The Good Bally's, and that Tom Gittenmeier of Columbia MO is MarkO's newest bestest friend, by virtue of finishing behind him in their age group at a recent half-marathon. (Lots of inside jokes there, of course, but you get the drift.)

Twitter provides this same camraderie, but without the requirement that everyone belong on the same mailing list. For example, a friend of mine I want to keep up with does scrapbooking. Ain't no way I'm gonna join a scrapbooking mailing list in this lifetime - or the next.

4. I feel it's my responsibility to post interesting and/or funny tweets most of the time - followers are spending their time reading my stuff, so I need to respect that and not be a bore. The goal is to make milk come out of somebody's nose every day.

I try not to whine more than once every day or two, either. Another challenge.

OTOH, what I tweet becomes somewhat self-selecting. Folks not interested in what I'm yapping about will wander elsewhere, much like folks won't read a blog that they don't find interesting.

5. So, ya sold yet?

To get started, here's the link to twitter:

http://twitter.com

Once you create an account, the next thing to do is find entities that you want to follow. Here are a couple:

http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

Yes, the Phoenix mission team sends out tweets several times a day. How COOL is that?

http://twitter.com/the_Onion

http://twitter.com/scobleizer

and, of course,

http://twitter.com/whil

A sampling of my recent posts (reverse chrono order), just so you can see what you might be getting into:

Chainsaw city around here, and we're nowhere near Texas - or a massacre. Three of the four streets around us are blocked by downed trees.

Rocket Day #3 complete. 200 rockets went up. Most came down again. It was VERY windy out there. Some might not land until Tuesday.

Rain, rain, go away, come again - after I frackin' die. Got a brand new bike that I wanna ride. The neighbor with the car alarm can go away too.

I understand the words but not the sentences. Naw, I don't really even understand the words. /NP: Rammstein. I'm such a fossil./

Ch 6 Intro: Like the characters in Animal Farm, all configuration settings are important, but some are more important than others.

'tis poetry in 140 characters, eh?

6. As far as folks I follow, my only regret is that I do not know enough supermodels whose husbands travel a lot. Actually, I don't know any, which makes my 'following' list look like the bulletin board at the Post Office. But that would be my fault, I suspect.

The final point...

There are two reasons I bring this twitter thing up... First, the folks in these Web UG meetings? This is the next generation. The kids who grew up with computers and cell phones and MySpace. What is the world going to look like in ten or twenty years? Star Trek communicators? They're here.

I don't understand it, and I certainly don't grok it. And that's just as big a reason to attend - not just to maybe learn something about the Web, but to watch this group interact and evolve. Twitter is an outstanding example of how they do this.

And second, more selfishly... I'm looking at my last 35 years or so... There are a lot of groups of folks with whom I've lost touch - high school cross country and math team pals, everyone in my college fraternity, running partners and UG friends from Cincinnati, a lot of FoxGang folks, the list goes on. As with many folks, I haven't kept touch with a lot of these more than the occasional (every 3-5 years, in some cases) call or card. There isn't a single homogeneous solution to do so, but twitter is definitely one mechanism that works for me.