Oliver is ICT Co-ordinator at Watershed, as well as being a freelance  
all-rounder. He tends to dislike such in-your-face social networking  
tools as facebook and twitter, but does love seeing what people are  
getting up to.
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"Locative conversational voyeurism"

At a recent event I organised in Watershed's cafe/bar, I set up  
"Twittershed". Instead of asking "What are you doing?", it asked for  
a table number and "What are you talking about?". The results were  
sent to a large LCD screen in the bar for all to see, and also  
twittered out to let the world follow the party. People could move  
tables to join conversations they wanted to be a part of, and people  
arriving late could find a conversation worth settling into.

Of course, it didn't work - people were too busy meeting, moving and  
drinking to worry about twittershedding. But I think the principle  
could work in other contexts, such as normal afternoons and evenings  
in Watershed's cafe/bar, or as a way of making Open Spaces workshops  
or any other breakout-session-oriented conference even more dynamic.

I'm interested in sharing ideas for interfaces, situations and  
technologies to help make twittershed a regular reality: of course,  
the ideas/code need not be limited to Watershed.

I'll elaborate more on the ideas behind twittershed (and why I find  
it exciting), but hopefully most of the session will be a general  
discussion of ideas.

This event is open and free.
If you would like to attend please sign up by clicking here and
adding your details to the Open Studio Friday group.