I’ve written before about how much I enjoy using Twitter at conferences for the back-channel discussion. On April 21st at 5 PM EDT / 2 PM PDT we’ll all have our chance to immerse ourselves in the back-channel discussion without a conference. Along with Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart of Cascade Insights I’ll be hosting the first Competitive Intelligence Twitter chat.
A Twitter chat is a scheduled, semi-structured discussion around a given topic or subject using Twitter. Tweets related to each chat are united by the designated hash tag. For our chat that tag is #cichat. At the designated time run a Twitter search for that hashtag to follow along in the discussion. You can find out more about Twitter chats by reading this article. If you like the concept you can see a schedule of other Twitter chats here.
Our first discussion is going to be about how to move requests for CI support from information-oriented requests to decision support. This is a topic near to my heart because I believe this is a key to maintaining the value that CI can deliver for stakeholders. I’ve written about it here. I interviewed Merrill Brenner on his methods for decision-focused CI on the competitive Intelligence Podcast. After our first Twitter chat our tentative plan is to address another CI topic at that same time every week.
My hope is that #cichat will gain momentum and take on a life of it’s own. Seam, Scott and I will move from being like the expert speakers to being more like producers or facilitators. If there is a topic you would like to see addressed, especially a topic on which you would like to take the lead please feel free to let us know.
