Megan A Moreno, MD, MSEd, MPH
Associate Professor of
Pediatrics
University of Washington
National pediatric conferences
are a common way for clinicians to learn what is new in the research and
clinical worlds, connect with colleagues and immerse themselves in a learning
environment. Over the past ten
years, media and technology have slowly grown within national conferences as a
topic of research, a new clinical tool, and a part of the meeting experience
itself. With the rise of social
media, these novel tools are also being integrated into the conference
experience. Social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter can enhance one’s
conference experience, or it can serve as a distraction to oneself or others.
Here are a few ways in which I’ve seen them intertwine within the pediatric
meetings I have attended the past few years, for better and for worse.
For better:
Meeting through tweeting: It is common practice now to use Twitter during
conferences. Active Twitter users
may interact digitally throughout an entire meeting even if they haven’t met in
person before. At a conference I
attended this fall, I saw attendees seeking out fellow Twitter users using
their profile picture so that they could introduce themselves with comments
such as: “I’ve been following your tweets the whole meeting, it is great to
meet you!” This bridging of online-to-offline social circles allows you to
expand your social network during meetings in new ways, and gives you easy ways
to keep in touch after the meeting.
Presentation feedback: For presenters at national meetings, it can be
challenging to get feedback.
Twitter provides a new way to get feedback by reviewing the conference
Twitter feed that was active during your presentation. Twitter users will be highly engaged
during a good presentation, and will retweet quotes or data they find
particularly useful. This allows the presenter to see what points
really hit home in the presentation.
For worse:
#wififail: At a recent meeting I attended, the conference
heavily promoted the use of social media and provided a unique hashtag, but
then did not provide wifi in the conference center. Conference organizers and venue providers should pay
heightened attention to the availability of wifi.
#presenterfail: At a national conference, I attended a 3 person
panel presentation about social media and how it is changing youth engagement
and social norms. One message of
the presentation was that adolescents are too distracted by social media. All
panel members sat on stage facing the audience throughout the presentation, and
(somewhat ironically) one of the panel presenters was using his mobile device
while the others were presenting. This gave the audience the feeling that the
presenter was uninterested in what the other panelists were saying. It’s
unclear whether the presenter was tweeting, checking email, or just playing
Angry Birds. Even in our age of
digital immersion, there are times when it is not appropriate to tweet.
It is likely that the role and frequency of social media use
during conferences will
continue to
grow in coming years. Thus,
pediatric conferences have opportunities to
consider how they want to integrate it into the experience
and help shape the etiquette of
social media use during conferences. One unique contribution conference
organizers
could consider is to provide sessions to educate
pediatricians about using these tools
during the conference experience. Conferences may consider
having a hands-on session
early in the meeting where social media newbies could stop
by and learn how to set up a
Twitter account so they can start using it right away. Woven
into these sessions could be
discussions
about the etiquette of social media. This hands-on training could lower the
barriers to joining the online conversation, and may be a
valuable training opportunities
for busy pediatricians who otherwise wouldn’t take the time
to learn how to use these
tools. As the social media presence at our
national meetings grows, we should consider
innovative
possibilities to ensure pediatricians are joining the conversation.
