Twitter at the 2012 ARPA-E Summit (#eis12)

What do you need to know?

First, if you don’t already use Twitter, then you need to:

Sign up for a free Twitter account.
Learn the basics.
Install a free Twitter app on your mobile device.

Second, there are three ways to use Twitter at the Summit:

Share your thoughts, speaker quotes, and more by including the Summit’s Official Twitter Hashtag, #eis12, in your tweets.
Ask questions during panel session Q&A.
Contribute to the Idea Wall.

Twitter Language Basics

@Reply: The @ symbol on Twitter is followed by someone’s Twitter username (i.e. @ARPAE). Including a @Reply publicly tags that user and is meant to imply the message is directed to them or related to them.
Retweet: A retweet, or RT, is used when you wish to repost something another person said on their Twitter feed. Retweeting sends their message to your followers and notifies them that you are quoting them.
Hashtag: A hashtag is created when the pound (#) symbol comes before a word or phrase (i.e. #eis12). A hashtag is used in a message so other people can follow related sets of tweets.

Using Twitter for Summit Q&A

At the end of each panel session, moderators will turn to the audience for questions. Attendees will be able to ask questions via Twitter or microphone. To submit a question via Twitter, you will need to tweet your question using the specific hashtag for that panel (i.e. #eis12a, #eis12b, etc). The panel’s hashtag will be projected on the screen in each room at the beginning of the panel and during the panel’s Q&A period. Each panel will have a Twitter representative who reviews the questions submitted via Twitter and chooses which will be asked. Each panel’s moderator will alternate between taking questions from the floor and from the Twitter representative. Of course, due to time constraints, we cannot guarantee that every question asked will be answered.

Using Twitter for the Idea Wall

Throughout the 2012 Summit, we will pose questions to the audience to answer in a social setting (i.e. “What is America’s largest energy challenge?”). Attendees will be able to text or tweet their answers to these questions which will then be moderated and displayed on a live wall in the Summit’s main hallway.