iDiplomacy was twittering from the 140 Characters Conference yesterday. Appropriately enough for a Twitter conference most of the talks were very brief – ranging from 10 to 20 minutes for individuals and up to 50 minutes for a panel discussion on “The Democratization of Information” — a perfect length for the sometimes attention-challenged microblogging crowd.

David Saranga (@davidsaranga), former consul for media and public affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York, spoke about how they had hosted the first ever governmental press conference last December on Twitter when fighting in Gaza was occurring. The press conference, covered by mainstream media worldwide including the New York Times and the blogosphere, consisted of four people on laptops. The New York Times printed some of the questions they took, which they answered in Twitter shorthand:

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