Tony Karrer's eLearning Blog on e-Learning Trends eLearning 2.0 Personal Learning Informal Learning eLearning Design Authoring Tools Rapid e-Learning Tools Blended e-Learning e-Learning Tools Learning Management Systems (LMS) e-Learning ROI and Metrics

Monday, February 23, 2009

Twitter Forces us to Transmit the Big Idea

I was thinking about my upcoming presentation - Tapping the Social Grid that is coming up on Friday, Feb. 27 when I ran into a great post - All Things Workplace: Make People Listen: Know Your Big Idea:
How to Get to Your Big Idea

1. Wade through the facts, figures and themes of a topic until you can distill it to the point where it can be expressed in fewer than 10 words.

2. Shape your message around those 10 words.

3. When your audience hears your presentation, what is it you want them to remember above all else? Tell them the name of your Big Idea and that that is what you want them to remember.
The Big Idea for my presentation really comes down to:
  • Using tools and methods to
  • Reach other people
  • To help with my concept work problems.
This is longer than ten words - but it is less than 140 characters (I think). It's likely one of the big values of Twitter ... we are forced to use Twitter to Transmit the Big Idea.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great point, Tony. You could say it's the Web 2.0 version of the old, "write it on the back of your business card" idea made famous back in the Miami Vice days.

Shaun said...

I tend to get frustrated with many blogs as they can be too verbose. Twitter forces you to get to the point. Even the 15s elevator pitch gets distilled for twitter.

It's definitely more efficient writing and I spend more time on it. hopefully it's just as effective.

FAO said...

great 'word of inspiration' you've got there Tony, currently i'm using twitter just to keep inform others, what i've been doing .. the tools itself have so much power to benefit the e-community ..

STL Annie said...

I haven't tried "twittering" yet so I hesitate to weigh in yet. I'm interested in finding out how people have used Twitter in their training toolbox in a corporate environment.

Anonymous said...

Great perspective. I hadn't considered Twitter this way, but you're absolutely correct. As a former English teacher, I also see an opportunity to use twitter when teaching kids to summarize and find the main point. What a great homework assignment -- tweet the main idea of what you read tonight.