As noted in an earlier post, I'm going to the IT Pro week of TechEd EMEA in Barcelona. Last week was Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference (PDC), and even if you didn't go, you could keep up with the goings on vicariously using Twitter.

"Whatter?" you ask... Sometimes, with newer technologies - even cool ones - you can forget that "everyone" doesn't already know everything about it. Twitter is such a technology. Some folks call it a "micro blog". Others call it a "Massively Multi-User Group Chat". Basically, once you sign up, you can post anything you want - as long as it is 140 characters or less. This is called a "Tweet". One way to think of tweets is, if you took everyone's "what I'm doing" from Facebook, Messenger, etc... threw them into a continuous stream, and added the ability to subscribe to and search them, you would have Twitter.

Those last two points are critical, as they are what helps you keep the signal/noise ratio under control. You subscribe to someone's tweets by "Following" them. Then, when you access Twitter, you will see what the people you are following have said. The other side of the coin - searching - doesn't come from the main Twitter UI itself. Rather, it is done by third-parties through Twitter's API.

I'm using a tool called "TweetDeck". (http://www.tweetdeck.com). It provides a slick, multi-paned UI that lets you track based on your followings, searches, and replies, as shown below.

Yes, replies (that's the "chat" part). You can address a tweet to a particular Twitterer by prefixing their name with an @ (e.g. @woodywindy for me). Everyone can still see the message, but Twitter will also alert the intended recipient. There is a private ("direct") messaging function, too. TweetDeck isn't the only utility for managing tweets, by the way - but it sure helps.

In any case, even if you aren't going to TechEd, with Twitter, you can still keep up on the action - practically in real time!

Oh, by the way, yes, woodywindy really is my Twitter handle. Maybe if I don't see you in Barcelona, I'll catch you on the Twitstream (or in the Twitterverse).