I tend to want the moon on a stick, particularly when it comes to “audience participation” and even more so when it’s political…

I look forward to future efforts.

Agree with a lot of what you say here.

The twinge was designed to explore and debate the potential of twitter
and social media, and there are things to learn from it, about the
potential and limitations of the medium.

I think I’m right in saying this was the first time at party
conference a twitterwall had been introduced into the mix at an event.

Sitting at the back looking at the huge numbers of tweets and killing some of the spam, I did feel that some questions were getting good responses from the panel.

I’ve sat at conferences and been frustrated that the backchannel
debate had often been more interesting than the debate in the hall, so wanted to foreground some of that at this event.

It wasn’t just a Twitterfall either – we used paratweet to remove spam and try to build relevance to the debate on the floor.

Also to your point on FH people participating, fair enough, but we had no idea how the event would play out. I didn’t want to be looking at a blank screen come 8pm.

It absolutely was not perfect, but sometimes perfection is the enemy
of the good. Twinge added a new dimension to the debate but you’re
right – it could be taken further.

Everyone on the platform and C4 all agree – it’s an interesting way to widen the debate, and we hope to improve upon it next year, may be even along the lines you suggest…