Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Potential of Twitter in Japan

Jan 29, 2009 16:31 pm / Add a comment

Uchida Yoko peo­ple thought it was another one of those crazy ideas I brought in. Rather than doing Q&A after panel dis­cus­sion, I pro­posed that we set it up so that every­one can post ques­tion or com­ment dur­ing panel dis­cus­sion to real­ize audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion. I explained that peo­ple would feel freer to express their opin­ion through such medium, since they will not have any fear of embar­rass­ment. In front of 100 peo­ple, they can stay absolutely anony­mous. They don’t have to raise their hand, don’t have to worry that their voice will crack while ask­ing ques­tion, don’t have to worry if it’s a stu­pid ques­tion. This should enliven the event.

Since it was only with lim­ited audi­ence of 100 peo­ple, Uchida Yoko event team didn’t see too much harm in try­ing, so we went ahead with it. On the day of sus­tain­abil­ity case study pre­sen­ta­tion, big screens were ready, and the pan­elists were seated in front of the screen so they will be aware of what’s going on in the audi­ences’ mind.

The result was phe­nom­e­nal. Usu­ally at such event in Japan, even if the panel dis­cus­sion were very inter­est­ing, there would only be a hand­ful of ques­tions at the end. Actu­ally, until now, all such panel dis­cus­sion was not quite par­tic­i­pa­tive. But using Twit­ter, for this sus­tain­abil­ity case study panel dis­cus­sion, we had 40 very good ques­tions from 100 peo­ple audi­ences in 15 min­utes time while the panel dis­cus­sion was being held.

The pan­elists were sur­prised, but stim­u­lated by the ques­tions, and the dis­cus­sion became intense.

So here is a great way to draw out audience’s thoughts, to con­nect with the crowd: Twitter.

Next, I am going to use Twit­ter as a part of work­space user research. Thank you, Twit­ter team, for such won­der­ful tool!

Audi­ence using mobile phone to use Twitter

Panel dis­cus­sion in progress

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