Yesterday was London Region’s autumn conference, during which I heard from two recent converts to Twitter.

First, Keith House – leader of Eastleigh Council and probably the person with the best record of election results at both local and national level year in, year out in any council run by the Liberal Democrats.* Perhaps understandably given his record of electoral success, he hasn’t been chomping at the bit to innovate online  – but even Keith has now seen the benefits Twitter can bring and joined himself.

Keith highlighted how much greater the role of the internet would be at the next general election compared with the past – and the importance of not being left behind as people’s behaviour changes.

Second, Chris Nicholson, the Liberal Democrat prospective candidate for Streatham. Like Keith, Chris is not from the digitally native generation and Chris has been doing a fantastic job building up the campaign organisation and team in Streatham. Again, understandably, Twitter hasn’t been at the top of his list of priorities. But he recounted how recently he went canvassing and met a floating voter. She explained that she didn’t really follow politics in the media – but she did follow Nick Clegg and Bridget Fox on Twitter and was impressed with them both. Chris too is now on Twitter.

Finally, congratulations to Jonathan Fryer on his election as London Region chair. With Jonathan Davies also recently elected chair of the English Party, it is clearly the season to be called Jonathan.

* It’s a close run thing between Keith and a couple of other areas. I’ll leave it to others to argue in the comments how they’ve done even better 🙂