Volunteers Tweet to Success

Pro Bono Australia’s push to engage delegates from the National Conference on Volunteering on twitter has had great success.  

There were more than 450 tweets over the three days providing a rich and engaging real-time conversation running alongside the conference.

Promoting the use of twitter in the lead up to the conference, Pro Bono Australia asked those attending to include the hashtag #VA2010 in their conference-related tweets. A beginners guide to using twitter at the conference was also produced by Pro Bono Australia and posted on our website and handed out at the conference.

So, here are some of the over 450 tweets from the conference, selected to show the highlights as well as the role that social media can play in providing opportunities for sharing and networking.

The Pro Bono Australia News team was on-site at the conference, tweeting interesting points arising from the plenary sessions:

The news team also used twitter to send out headlines and links to our news articles.  Delegates without access to twitter were able to drop by the Pro Bono Australia News desk and write down a manual twitter for the team to send out:

People attending the conference were able to share general comments on the conference, as well as highlights from plenaries and workshops:

Or what they hoped they would get out of it:

People unable to attend the conference were able to keep up with what was happening:

During the panel discussion on definitions of volunteering, Nerida Gill (not attending the conference) was able to join in the discussion, contributing her own definition:

People used twitter to share relevant recources:

Networking with other attendees:

Conference hosts Volunteering Australia were able to use twitter to share important information about the conference:

And not so important:

Jenny Geale, Brisbane chapter leader with Room to Read, won an award for being the most prolific twitterer over the start of the conference:

Twitter also offers a real-time feedback to conference organisers.  Many suggestions were tweeted including requiring pre-registration for workshops to ensure room allocations were correct, as well as many tweets regarding the quality of the food (both good and bad).  The best food related tweet has to be this one:

Final word:

Click here to view the full twitter conversation.

Download Pro Bono Australia's Beginner's Guide to Twitter. [PDF]