ad:tech London: Hashtags for Today's Auditorium Sessions

Hallo, folks. Rough start today; the party at the Kensington Roof Gardens last night was chill, long-lasting and laced with vodka. As a result, attendance this morning is thin and slightly haggard.

But for the valiant, some good news: wifi is now available in the main auditorium. That means more people can participate in the Twitter orgy. (*does a little dance*)

I'll be livetweeting a few sessions today: Trends & Predictions 2.0, What Makes Young People Tick Online?, and The Shifting Rules of Engagement in Digital.

Here are the hashtags for auditorium-based events this morning and afternoon, in the event you want to either join the conversation or start one.

o Keynote Presentation: A trip to the future... #at09future

o TRENDS AND PREDICTIONS 2.0: Interpreting global market trends to forecast the future for your business & community. #at09trends

o WHAT MAKES YOUNG PEOPLE TICK ONLINE? Engage youth audiences with meaningful dialogue, relevant content and targeted incentives. #at09youth

o JARGON-FREE APPROACH TO TARGETING: Right person, time, message, place. Sounds simple – so how’s it achieved? #at09target

o KEYNOTE: Loyalty, transparency, conversations and giving a damn! #at09loyalty

o CREATIVITY IN DIGITAL: Featuring Match.com and Playboy. How match.com remains the brand of choice for people looking for love. #at09matchplay

o THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN CONSUMER DIALOGUE: Blogs, UGC and communities – how are they changing the way people engage online? #at09engage

If you just want to lurk, visit search.twitter.com and run a search for the hashtags you want. Also be sure to check out #adtechlondon, an ongoing stream of what everybody's seeing, doing and selling.

ad:tech London: Wedding Organization to Engagement, and Vice-Versa

This week I'm in the city of Big Ben for ad:tech London, which kicked off this morning with a keynote by Managing Partner Thomas Gensemer of Blue State Digital, who explained -- as much as he could in a 30 minute space -- what keys to success characterized the Obama campaign.

This particular ad:tech is unique because we're trying something new and scary: livetweeting a number of the presentations. A feature called Picture on Picture enables us to broadcast three projections at once: a video projection of the session, the presentation (if panelists have any PowerPoints) and a dedicated window for the Twitter feed.

Each presentation has its own hashtag, which you can find in the ad:tech programme and which enables us to separate panel-specific tweets from general #adtechlondon tweets. For example, here's the material from the Obama keynote.

The cool thing about this experiment:

o It's new territory for ad:tech, an attempt to reap practical real-time application from a tool that's captured the imagination of both brand folks and citizen users.

o You can see commentary while the speaker is presenting, enabling you to catch things you missed and also input feedback if you think a given point is exceptional or total crap. (Seriously. The ad:tech folks were like, "This is part of the new environment. We should all welcome that kind of feedback.")

o People that get overlooked in the QA can air their views right over the speaker's head -- which certainly contributes to a session's entertainment value.

Caveats:

o There isn't any wifi in the auditorium, which means livetweet feedback is limited to users with 3G phones.

o Attendance is thin -- about 200 pre-reg -- which means that while the crowd's a little more intimate, there isn't a great deal of participation.

Still trying to work out the perfect formula. At the very least, I'm glad it's something we're trying and not just talking about. In the meantime, follow conference-related tweets at @adtech_london. Feedback that isn't batshit-insane* will receive a warm fuzzy reception.

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* When I started tweeting as @adtech_london early this morning, somebody on Twitter ran off-field with the Obama conversation and tried converting my religion. Come on, there's a place and time for that: college on the quad.