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If your boss recently told you that the training budget has been cut for the rest of the year, and you can attend your next developer conference when the financial crisis is over, you could be waiting a while to brush up your IT skills. Luckily, the most rich learning tool in the world is on your desktop and your iPhone right now. All you need to do is use it. Surprise! It’s Twitter.

Now is the perfect time to get on the Twitter bandwagon. Not because Barack Obama won an election with it, or because BusinessWeek tracks Twitter’s every move, but because you can learn a TON from very smart people in IT without having to leave your seat. In this post, I’d like to give you a few ideas on how to use Twitter to learn. First though, let’s get over the common objection.

Twitter Is Just a Waste of Time

People who don’t use Twitter at all, or have used it but don’t “get it” fall into these general areas:

• I just don’t have time to sit there all day long and tell people what I’m doing.
• It’s 140 characters, what’s the point?
• I don’t want to know what random people are eating for breakfast, or whether their flight is late

To you objectors, shut your pie hole and go join Twitter now. You can even read a newbie guide to Twitter to make yourself comfortable, then c’mon back. Like email, Twitter can be a waste of time, but I’m going to show you how to use it productively to boost your knowledge fast.

Be a Fly on the Wall

The reason Twitter is such a compelling professional learning tool is that you can be a fly on the cubicle wall of the best thinkers in IT. Think of it like the world’s biggest shadow program. Instead of reading another dry Ruby on Rails book, you can follow the guy who invented it, David Heinemeier Hansson, or sit next to Sam Stephenson as he programs with it every day.

Get the Pulse of the Industry NOW

While 140 character tweets will keep you informed of where your favorite IT heroes go to lunch, you’ll also get the latest industry buzz. People tweet relevant news, links to blog posts with code hacks, or project management tips. You’ll also find lots of everyday struggles with technology, software, or vendors. This gives you a keen view into potential project pitfalls and key inside information. Remember that 140 characters prevents long URLs from being inserted into tweets. You’ll likely see most tweets contain a “shortened URL” like this http://bit.ly/10f8J from popular URL shortening services like bit.ly, or tinyurl.

Attend Conferences You Wouldn’t Normally Attend

You’ll find out very quickly the important industry events and conferences people are attending. Sometimes attendees will ‘live-tweet’ the conference to provide the most salient information to followers. Usually they will link to presentations, or supporting information mentioned in conference sessions. To get a sense for live-tweeting watch Stephen Colbert do it on election night.

Even more useful is when hundreds of conference attendees tweet from the event. To aggregate all of the tweets together, you’ll see a hash tag like this #smj08 which leads to a recap of all tweets that were related to the event.

Meet Important ‘Tweople’

Perhaps the best reason to use Twitter is for how easy it is to discover new people. Within any tweet you’ll often see mention of other Twitter users. For instance, someone might say “tx @KrisRzepkowski for the great advice.” Click that person, and you’ve just found a whole new expert from which to learn.

Get a Tool

Get a twitter client for your computer and/or your phone. You will get FAR more value from Twitter than just using your web browser. For your PC, I recommend TweetDeck. With it, you can save searches that will show tweets on particular areas of inquiry. When you are getting tweets from others who are also struggling with their latest Sharepoint project, you too will learn Twitter’s value. On my iPhone, I use Twitterific, a compact app that lets me tweet while on the run.

Follow, Follow, Follow

People on Twitter like to be followed, that’s called having an audience. The people you follow don’t need to approve you doing so. Get out there today and follow as many people as possible that can help you learn more about IT. I guarantee that the effort you put in will be at least worth the cost of that training session your boss canceled on you.

If you have feedback on using Twitter to learn you can follow me on Twitter. Or leave it in the comments below. I’d also love to hear who your favorite IT Twitterers are. You are welcome to leave your Twitter handle in the comments for all to follow.

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