As I was catching up on things this morning (weekend Tweets, my Google Reader, etc…), I stumbled upon this post by Sarah Perez: Study Reveals High Levels of Twitter Use at Conferences. A group of European researchers studied behaviors of conference attendees and found that most of them (95.1 percent) already had Twitter accounts. Many of those with Twitter accounts used the messaging service to send updates about the conference.

“The Twitterers were using the medium to share the information they were learning at the present moment as opposed to posting links to information already available on the web,” wrote Perez. The researchers looked at the motives of the people tweeting and if tweeting could help enhance the learning experience at a conference.

With ASAE’s Annual Meeting and Expo coming up, this hit home for me. Of course, several Clickers will be attending the conference in Toronto (manning Booth 500 in the Technology Showcase), but I’m not one of them. I’ll be following the tweets of everyone using the hashtag #ASAE09 and compiling the information after it’s over (or, hopefully every day).

I’m hoping that a Clicker in Toronto will tweet for MemberClicks, because I want it to be obvious the company is present at ASAE. But another part of my job is communicating with and learning from other association professionals who will be at ASAE. During a recent #assnchat, we discussed creating a virtual experience for people who won’t be attending the conference. Attendees volunteered to take videos with their FlipCams, tweet during different sessions and (of course) write blog posts. Basically the only concern for “real-life” attendees was the fact that the conference is in Toronto (using cell phones to tweet could be costly!).

Not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to attend conferences, but social media (especially Twitter, because of its real-time search) is making it easier to accomodate virtual attendance. And I don’t think the number of attendees will decrease either, because a “real-life” experience is always better than a virtual one, no matter how great the videos, blog posts and tweets are.

Actually, based on all the reading I’ve done over the past few weeks on this topic, I think social media truly does enhance conferences and meetings because it’s easier for virtual attendees to interact with “real-life” attendees during presentations and sessions, rather than after the fact. Having people who aren’t actually at the conference can enhance the experience for everyone involved — everyone brings a different point of view to the table and the more people discussing, the better.

Of course, it’s up to all the in-person attendees to keep the virtual ones updated! Everyone benefits in the end, though.