Teaching Journalists About Twitter

It takes quite a lot to pack 50-odd journalists into a small room, especially when there isn’t a free bar in the offing. But it happened today. We launched a new internal initiative we’re calling, rather quaintly, Elevenses – a weekly, informal training / sharing / networking get-together, open to all. After much faffing around over dates, and subject matter and what-not, we finally kicked off with a session on Twitter, and over 50 people packed into a room only designed for half that.

It’s a mark of the sudden mainstreaming of Twitter – and its accessibility as a medium – that drove so many people there, I think, but it was also good to have some RBI folks like [Heidi](http://twitter.com/computerweekly), [Rob](http://twitter.com/robmoss), [Andrew](http://twitter.com/flightdoyle) and [Nathan](http://twitter.com/twblog) present to give real, vivid insight as to how they’re using Twitter as part of their day to day work. 

No PowerPoints. No lectures. Just people chatting with people. What better way to communicate about a conversational medium?

There’s only so much value in people being talked at again and again by swivel-eyed neophiles like myself. Sometimes is much more powerful when people actually using this stuff on the ground get up and do it.