Have you ever participated in a Twitter chat?
I’m not referring to the usual banter we have among friends on Twitter, but something slightly more organised – as Janet Fouts says: “Twitter chats, sometimes known as a Twitter party or a tweet chat, happen when a group of people all tweet about the same topic using a specific tag (#) called a hashtag that allows it to be followed on Twitter. The chats are at a specific time and often repeat weekly or bi-weekly or are only at announced times.”
I recently read about Twitter chats organised by “several leading connected educators” and thought it would be nice to have something similar for Australian library professionals. Of course there are any number of chats library people can participate in (such as the chat @readwatchplay organises) but I don’t know of anything that’s specifically for chatting about Australian library issues.
I asked the question (on Twitter of course):
The timezone issue was raised, and while it’s going to mean that not everyone is going to be able to participate all the time, this shouldn’t get in the way of us trying it.
So I guess if we’re going to do this, we need to sort out the logistics. We need to:
- Pick a time (I like Kathryn’s suggestion of sometime in the middle of the week during the day)
- Sort out a way to gauge what topics people want to talk about (love the idea of voting on topics)
- Get one or two volunteers to moderate and keep the chat on track
- Get folks to publicise the chat
Any other comments, folks? I’m happy for us to discuss here on this blog – or we can chat via email if that’s easier. Let me know what you think!
**WordPress version 3.8 doesn’t like tweet embedding; apologies for the screenshot. Wordpress 3.8.1 can’t come soon enough.