The Twitter Back Channel to Sex::Tech

Though initially I resisted it, I have grown to love the fuck out of Twitter. For the most part, I use it to keep tabs on friends who are all over the place, doing different but (sometimes) interconnected things. When I was in Vegas a few weeks ago, I used it to keep up with my colleagues Regina Lynn and Damon Brown, who were also in Las Vegas for the Adult Expo (they were checking out the Consumer Electronics Show as well, while I was all adult all the time). As Chris Brogan has referred to it, Twitter can be used as a “director’s commentary” to other media projects. It was this and more last week when I was at Sex::Tech. Several of my Twitter pals were at the same conference: Melissa Gira, Regina Lynn, Nikol Hasler, and Guy Clark (though Guy didn’t tweet during the conference). Using Twitter kept me connected to them, while we were all broadcasting our snippets of conversation to the broader Twitter community. It was pretty damn cool.

Here’s a sample of what this looked like, from the session that Melissa Gira and Stacey Swimme did about the sex worker blog Bound, Not Gagged, which Regina, Nikol and I all attended:

[NB: timestamps are off because there's a mix of timezones, even though we were in the same place - you set timezone when you create your twitter and some of us (cough) forget to change it when we jet around]

audaciaray At the bound not gagged talk 05:24 PM January 23, 2008 from txt

audaciaray Melissa Gira:”we’re part of the community that we serve” 05:37 PM January 23, 2008 from txt

reginalynn http://www.desireealliance…. Melissa & Stacey are talking about the power of community, connection, blogs to change the world. awesome. 02:43 PM January 23, 2008 from TwitterFox

reginalynn Melissa Gira: Advocacy doesn’t pay as much as sex work. 02:52 PM January 23, 2008 from TwitterFox

reginalynn LOL @audaciaray i just noticed you’re tweeting quotes too! but i can’t see you from where i’m sitting.. LOL 02:52 PM January 23, 2008 from TwitterFox

audaciaray @reginalynn go team twitter! 05:53 PM January 23, 2008 from txt in reply to reginalynn

reginalynn @audaciaray i see you! your hair is so pretty. *feels so lucky to be here, now, with these people* 02:54 PM January 23, 2008 from TwitterFox in reply to audaciaray

audaciaray @reginalynn I swoon at how many sex nerds are in the room 05:56 PM January 23, 2008 from txt in reply to reginalynn

NikolHasler You should see Melissa Gira looking amazing and being smart. 05:01 PM January 23, 2008 from web

Just looking at these short little snippets makes it seem so (too?) simple, but Twitter totally one-ups live blogging, as far as I’m concerned. There’s no republish button for Twitter, you just send off 140 character missives. I’ve live blogged events before and I usually find myself getting much more engaged with the typing than with what’s going on around me. Twitter is a little less distracting and takes me out of the moment less. It’s a neat tool, and it was cool to use it in this slightly different way – and then, of course, go home and use it just like I did before.