Tweeting and conferencing.

"I was staying at the #Westin with Jesus and John Wayne." -#WarrenZevon #westinbayshore

A photo posted by Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) on Nov 19, 2015 at 1:15pm PST

My room at the Westin Bayshore for the next couple nights. #hotelroom #conferencing

A photo posted by Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) on Nov 18, 2015 at 11:16pm PST

Last week I had the opportunity to take part in the BCSSA's semi-annual conference for educators. I attended as a teacher representative for my district. I stayed at the Westin Bayshore in Coal Harbour, Vancouver, BC, right above where the conference itself took place. Overall, I had a good time.

Knowing that I would be encouraged to do a lot of tweeting during the conference, I set up a new Twitter account in order to address more education-based tweets; I had no interest in filling people's feeds with my usual sets of links and reflections. Fortunately, my phone makes it easy to switch between the two accounts.

​I tweeted a lot. 

For example, I used my clip-on 12x lens to take these photos of the keynote speakers, namely Robert Marzano and Dr. Norman Doidge:

@robertjmarzano at the #bcssa15 pic.twitter.com/zXBp8KWl15

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jnordedu) November 19, 2015

Dr. Norman Doidge. #bcssa15 pic.twitter.com/Qvk3cO4c9u

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jnordedu) November 20, 2015

And I tweeted lots of responses to speakers and presenters. For example,

Ohhh... Saw the "Attendance is affecting performance" quote at the bottom of that slide. □ Report cards can be so cold. #bcssa15

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jnordedu) November 20, 2015

From the floor: Model resiliency. Put yourselves out there, make mistakes, and keep going. Take a risk or two. #bcssa15

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jnordedu) November 19, 2015

If I expect my students 2 use literacy strategies & reflect on how they use 'em, I should expect the same 4 myself re. my teaching. #bcssa15

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jnordedu) November 19, 2015

Disruption is important, but I fear manufacturing it in the name of innovation. Identify your disruptions wisely. Just pondering. #bcssa15

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jnordedu) November 20, 2015

Now, I'm fully aware that I don't use my hashtags with skill or aplomb, and I rarely tweet incendiary comments in order to drum up controversy. I enjoyed writing tweets while people presented; it worked as an interesting way to frame my notes and memories from the content. It felt a little rude to be looking at a screen now and then while presenters were making their points, but it was fun and generally served its purpose.

Unless your purpose was actual networking and meeting real life people. I didn't meet a single one of the people with whom I shared a Twitter dialogue. All those tweets and I didn't come out of it with a single new connection. All that screentime without a new face.

The only people I really met were people I met face-to-face without the aid of a phone.

What's the point, then? Why spend all this time tweeting if you don't get to meet a real person out of it?

All of this only shows me one thing: that if I'm crummy at meeting people in real life, Twitter is not the method I need to use to facilitate more connections.