While the Kodak Theater in Hollywood typically plays host to actual celebrities at the annual Academy Awards, last week’s 140 Characters Conference in Hollywood brought together a different set of notable names: the Twitterati. Jeff Pulver’s first event in a series taking place around the world drew together entertainment folks, journalists, poker players and even police chiefs, all talking about how they use Twitter to spread information, market themselves and connect with a new audience.
In some ways, it’s a miracle that anyone had a face-to-face conversation at the event, which was organized as a quick-fix series of 15-minute panels, what with everyone firmly looking down, typing and texting away to record the two-day event in real time.
But I’ll play along. In the spirit of the event, here are a few of my favorite 140 characters from the day:
This guest post was written by Laura Hertzfeld.
From Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush (@billybush), who warned against tweeting and driving and drunk tweeting (dweeting?):
FTR, I did not get $ 2 speak at #140conf. Was a cool opp to meet amazing folks like @rumford, @dom, @kim, @adventuregirl, @bing. I m a pea
There was something of a Kumbaya feeling among the Twitterati. Conference founder Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver) summed it up:
Thank you to everyone who is part of my twitter mornings. Thanks to YOU, I have a daily reminder of humanity and serendipity.
And in this crowd, you didn’t have to be George Clooney to get outed as a celeb, as conference-goer @ciaobella50 gave her take on some of presenters:
Celebs I met yesterday.. @billybush…(hottie),,,Pres of CNN (amazing)…Arianna Huffington (brilliant) ..Annie Duke (Sweet)
@eriksundelof shared a smart train of thought upon seeing Arianna Huffington’s panel on the future of news:
Arianna seems to be talking about community funded models at the LA 140 conf. Both Allvoices and Spot.Us are great models here. #140conf
Fitting for the location, here is the response of AMC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff (@amcnews) to Gawker’s Richard Rushfield on how covering the Oscar nominations has changed.
#140conf @richardrushfield: Death, Oscar noms “typical thing is get reactions.” Now everyone tweets feelings so job is chasing social media.
And how can you not love a conference where someone says, “I can haz cheezburger” with a straight face? Here’s the video of Cheezburger Network CEO Scott Porad conveying his words of wisdom on social media:
Next up for Pulver is London on November 17th and New York City on June 16th and 17th.
Guest author: Laura Hertzfeld is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. In addition to writing for ReadWriteWeb, she is managing editor of EconomyStory.org, a Public Radio Exchange (PRX) project aggregating public media coverage of the economy.
