From Canada to London: How Twitter Opens (Conference) Doors

As Twitter matures and empowers people, users of the micro-blogger service are finding more ingenious ways to communicate. Twittering or sending tweets (updates) about conferences or live events, such as the Presidential debates, are gaining in popularity.

Earlier this morning, I was following the tweets emerging from Internet Librarian International 2008, held this year in London, England. In particular, I was following librarian and blogger Michael Stephens and his tweets, while one of his colleagues, Michael Casey, was speaking on a panel.

At one point, Stephens highlighted a panel member's point (not Casey, but someone named Thomas), who said: "Some people are Librarian by attitude...LIS edu is not necessary for all."

I found the statement very intriguing for numerous reasons, which I will not delve into today. But I am certain long-time readers will have an idea. (Is being a librarian or archivist really only an attitude, or is it a combination of theory and training?)

I replied to Stephens' tweet with the following: "What if you are LIS grad but do not possess a librarian attitude? What should one do?"

The point was not necessarily to receive a response or to even debate the statement (I mean, these are pro-bloggers, after all, they are busy people in the middle of a conference, so I wasn't expecting a response).

To my surprise, however, Stephens and Casey both replied to my tweet and panel members started to discuss the question I had asked, revealing once again the power of Web 2.0 in general and Twitter in particular.

How cool is that?

While the statement regarding librarian attitude and education and the question I had asked still require more thought (and perhaps a dedicated blog post), I was pleasantly surprised to see that Twitter leveled the field, whereby someone in Canada could influence the direction of a conference in London.