Twittermentary

One interesting thing that happened today was that I had the privilege to meet director Siok Siok and team who gave a special screening of Twittermentary followed by Q&A.

Not too long ago, I was one of those people in the world who saw no value in Twitter. I simply could not understand how much can a short 140 character long micro blog do other than to gather people who shares with the world about their day-to-day routines. Given that I do not want to share such mundane stuff with others, if not for a past IT assignment where I programmed Twitter to link up with PayPal to make micro payments, I did not bother to use it at all. Till recently, I had a paradigm shift. Pretty late, but better late than never :)

Anyway, I was thinking that yes, Twitter as a tool has limited value. However, huge value comes when people use it in a meaningful way. This is due to the formation of a 'digital community' where a huge amount of people in the world can be much closer with each other in a way that they would have limited chance to do so in a physical world. It is a place where people can exchange ideas, thoughts and feelings with strangers, it is a place where relationships and trust can be built.

For example, from some influential people I followed, I got to know about the egypt incident way before reading the newspapers. Also, my classmates and I had a platform to continuously share and discuss about topics related to the digital media 24/7. We would otherwise never have been able to do so as a class other than the limited 3hrs weekly.

In fact, I was reflecting on the key takeaways of the Twittermentary Q&A today, and realised that my Prof and classmates have done all the key summary for me! Furthermore, I could personally thank the main speaker hours after the event ended. How rare is that? Thanks Twitter (:

Key Takeaways from Siok Siok:

'I wanted an outcome I did not expect.' Maybe this is the mindset we need when we deal with new/digital media. - @trixiayong

'The test of a good idea is whether or not the kernel remains true when others start developing the idea further.' - @communicateaisa

'Crowdsourcing is harder than it seems. You need a very large user base to make it work' - @communicateaisa

'Twittamentary lesson. Twitter for crowdsourcing is the execution side of a good idea. U can't just sit at home tweeting' - @communicateaisa


Side Note: Teaser on Twittermentary