The only sort of rough topic-indicator in use is the @username lexicon, which shows that a twitter is in response to another twitter. You can use that to follow twitter conversations back through the timeline.

Re: receiving lots of twitters at once, I’ve found that I do tend to stop text alerts on anyone who swamps me, and three texts in a row does feel a bit swampy.

I’ve considered a very similar scenario for an app I’ve been working on for some time. I reckon there’s a vast niche there for the model that hits the nail on the head.

Yeah, with my old phone (capacity 200 texts) this would be a complete turn off. With my new phone this is not a problem at all.

That said, one advantage of this is it doesn’t just have to be done over phones. The information can be sent to any internet-enabled device such as”departure board” screens in the bars and so on.

Also, you can turn off the notifications. so say you’re chatting in Rootys and want to be notified – send a code to Twitter and you start receiving messages. Then later when you’re in a groove and not worried about missing stuff you can turn it off.

Explaining the notifications and getting people to sign up needs to be done before people arrive.
You can twitter messages like “only 5 sleeps until Capsule” to show how twitter works before they arrive. You need to be careful not to spam peoples phones.

I don’t know what 250 phones all receiving three twitter messages in a row would sound like, I’m guessing not great.

Also you need to be clear on the freeness of it, I think a lot of people are warly of phone scams and rip off texts.

The community aspect is very interesting, all you can do is encourage by example. Have a giant screen showing mini-reviews and explain how to submit your own.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2214/2040864838_3df2dfae9e_o.jpg

You could even get some Flickr photos flying around from the supersonic group?

I’m not sure I fully understand that, but it has led me to think of something else worth asking – can you filter what you’re receiving?

A ‘ten minute warning’ message followed by an ‘actually starting’ message for eeeevery single band at the festival would result in a lot of crap to have to delete. Is there any sort of, oh I don’t know, tagging (or similar) that can be applied to Twitter?

Alex did 140-char reviews of every band he saw. Glenys was mostly doing locations, telling us where things and people were. I twittered awesome stage moments, interesting food opportunities and odd happenings. JP was more planny, proposing stuff. Tom was more experiential and also did warnings.

The effect was (rather than the come-here, go-there scenario you envisage) of having your experience broadened. I got more of the festival that way, and “saw” more out of the festival as a result.

What’d be nice I think would be a way to pick up strangers on twitter in a zone, location or channel. There’s a basic open/closed mechanism already so people who want to stay private can do so, but the “zone, location or channel” aspect isn’t really built into the Twitter system, unfortunately.

I like your idea of the public sculpture — there’s something a bit like that at the mobile phone festivals but it’s depressingly primitive, and of course the messages don’t go anywhere.

This is all probably more practical than my suggestion to improve Supersonic (i.e. an onsite petting zoo).