Genealogy Conference Tweeting

Hello,

There is an on-going discussion about the use of twitter during genealogy conferences. I’ve heard about this from a post on GeneaBloggers. This is actually a very interesting subject, so I thought I’d weigh in with my opinions on the matter.

Recently, I attended the FEEFHS and SGGEE’s Super Conference in Milwaukee. I went to four presentations during the first day of the conference and took notes. These notes were later incorporated into two blog posts Super Conference 2009: A Journey of Discovery – Review Part 1 and Super Conference 2009: A Journey of Discovery – Review Part 2.

Personally, I can see two sides to this dilemma. First, I believe the tweeting verbatim during a presentation does border on copyright infringement. The presenters are experts in their fields and are paid to speak at these events. Their is a fine line between summarizing and plagiarizing. Unless the speakers approve the use of twitter during a presentations, I believe it should not be used.

Secondly, I believe that taking notes and providing a summary of a presentation is not a copyright violation. The summaries should be high level and should always give credit to the speakers. An overview or summary is more or less an abstract of the whole presentation. In both of my summaries I gave a few helpful links that were provided by the speakers, interesting facts and details, and provided links to the speaker if more information is sought out. A summary is by no means a replacement for attending the presentation.

These are some of my immediate thoughts on the matter. Please feel free to weigh in on this topic by posting a comment.

Best Regards,
Al