“Twitter changes everything”… I’m sitting in a conference session by that name right now. That may be a stretch, but it certainly does change many things, including how people participate at events like conferences and speeches.
Increasingly presentations to large audiences are happening in the context of a ‘backchannel’, where attendees are responding in real time to what is being said at the podium. That’s a pretty interesting development, but one that’s a bit off-balance: while the audience can converse with one another and respond to what they’re hearing in the room, the content of the presentation doesn’t make it into the stream unless someone (re)tweets it.
So what if your presentation software could send tweets on your behalf that were timed to the slides of your presentation? You could effectively simulcast your presentation through the backchannel as a part of the conversation, adding ‘more info’ links, credits, or anything else you could imagine…
Enter Keynote Tweet, a simple open-source script that provides the capacity to participate in the backchannel by combining Twitter with Apple Keynote. All you have to do is add text wrapped in [twitter] and [/twitter] tags in the presenter notes section of a slide. When that slide comes up in the presentation the script grabs that text and sends it to Twitter on your behalf.
Here are the details:
The software works with Keynote (on a Mac) but not with Powerpoint. It’s written in AppleScript so it’s easy to customize — it’s compiled as a Stay-Open application but you can open it in Script Editor to modify as you wish. Out of the box it will ask you if you want to add any #hashtags or @mentions to all the tweets (e.g. for a conference #hashtag), and will watch your presenter notes for [twitter]twitter this[/twitter], ignoring the rest of your notes, while in presentation mode only.
In order for the code to work you’ll need to have your Twitter credentials in your Keychain. If they’re not in there already, use Keychain Access to add a new password to your login keychain with the following information:
- Keychain Item Name: http://twitter.com
- Account Name: Your email address
- Password: Your Twitter password
(Thanks to codahale.com for this approach to applescript)
I (@gentry) will be testing this tomorrow at the Enterprise 2.0 conference (#e2conf) for the first time. If you happen to be there I’d love to hear any feedback on how it works in real life…
Tilman
24/06/2009 at 3:17 am // PermalinkGreat idea! How does it work it exactly? Did you find a way to tap into the event of switching slides in keynote? I read the script but could not find, how you did that. Is it possible to have more than one [twitter]-part in the notes of one screen? What about the 140 char limit?
Thanks, great work.
Gustavo
24/06/2009 at 6:40 am // PermalinkGreat Idea!
There’s a similar application for PC (windows) users?
Gentry
24/06/2009 at 8:23 am // PermalinkTilman, Keynote 3 supports scripting, so coding was pretty easy. You just have to ask Keynote for the notes content of the slide being presented. the “idle” function gets called every second and a bit of checking makes sure you don’t tweet the same thing over and over… that’s about it!
Gentry
24/06/2009 at 8:24 am // PermalinkGustavo, I’m not aware of any PC/windows equivalent.
jacobe
24/06/2009 at 8:49 am // PermalinkThe first thing that comes to mine is Stephen Colbert’s segment ‘The Word’ – where while he is talking and monologuing to the camera, there is additional information popping up on screen that is relevant to what he is saying…
Nice idea!!
Philipp
24/06/2009 at 9:23 am // Permalinkgenius idea – Gentry, I love it. Getting closer to switching to a Mac…
Cristian
24/06/2009 at 1:33 pm // PermalinkWord! Great work, and thanks for sharing.
miss stephanie
12/07/2009 at 4:47 pm // Permalinkare these 2 supposed to be the same?
[twitter] and [/twitter] [tweet]twitter this[/tweet]
Gentry
22/07/2009 at 4:13 pm // Permalinkmiss stephanie, good catch. [tweet] doesn’t work. my bad. fixed in the copy above.
Timo Elliott
03/11/2009 at 5:27 pm // PermalinkGreat idea! Here’s a version I put together for Windows, as a PowerPoint add-in: http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/powerpoint-twitter-tools/
Ninakix
12/11/2009 at 11:43 am // PermalinkI had a really hard time reading the article because of that picture. Wow.
Tony Watkins
18/11/2009 at 2:28 am // PermalinkBrilliant. It works really well. I’m going to be using this a lot, starting on Saturday during two seminars I’m leading. Thanks very much!
JD
19/11/2009 at 9:58 am // PermalinkGreat & unique idea! Worked like a charm in your #w2e presentation.Well done! Yes it sux to have people in an audience twittering rather than listening, so this should help all.
Blane Warrene
15/12/2009 at 1:58 pm // PermalinkGreat stuff – I will get to test this out on some presentations and share it with the team simultaneously via Twitter. Thanks for this app.
Abdiel Ledesma
25/08/2012 at 2:48 pm // PermalinkHi. I want to thank you for the KeynoteTweet creation.
I followed the instructions on several sites, but I couldn’t make tweets to be sent from my presentation.
I will be very happy if I can use it in a presentation I will have on Wednesday Aug 29th.
Please let me know if you have any idea why it’s not working.