After an event is over, we take stock. We measure the number of tweets, the number of people who could have possibly seen those tweets, the number of blog posts, the number of discussion threads in the LinkedIn group, etc., etc., etc.… We take these numbers to indicate the level of engagement surrounding an event. But is this what they are actually telling us?

A recent post by Ann Priestley challenged me to think about the ways we measure the online engagement with a conference. She presented a graph from Socious, who use the high peak of activity during an event and sharp tapering of this activity after the event as part of their argument to sell their product. Their implication is that unless your event has a long tail of post-event activity, it is not as successful at long-term engagement.