Story and photo by Nikki Villoria
Many SPJ members found themselves stepping out of scheduled convention sessions on Friday and stepping into the World Wide Web to test their newly learned skills.
President-elect Sarah Bauer and Chapter Director Justin Piehowski, both of the Minnesota Professional Chapter, take a break from scheduled sessions Friday to log onto the Internet and catch up with work e-mails, Twitter updates and other online networking.
Other SPJ members sitting nearby were keeping up with speakers’ presentations through Twitter updates from seminar attendees.
Meanwhile, blogger and SPJ member Tamar Wilner, of Dallas, was trying to organize an impromptu session via Twitter.
Wilner was disappointed to find the ‘Blogging to Create Your Portfolio’ seminar, scheduled for 2:15 p.m. on Friday, was canceled.
Determined to discuss journalistic blogging, Wilner initiated a grassroots effort to gather SPJ members via Twitter to host their own blogging discussion.