Presenting for Twitter at Conferences

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Podium viewLast week, Adeline chronicled the recent “Twittergate” and considered the best practices for tweeting at conferences. I’m a huge fan of conference backchannels, particularly since my work is very interdisciplinary and it seems there’s an interesting conference every weekend that I wish I could attend. Twitter offers some insight into what happens in those spaces. How much insight? It depends–but not just on those tweeting. The presenters can play a big role in determining how accessible their work is to those looking in.

Why encourage tweeting of your work? There’s been lots of discussion of the value of academic tweeting and open exchange of ideas, which is important philosophically and part of why I tweet a conferences. But there’s also value to you as the presenter–feedback, a chance for extended conversations, and even the potential for finding collaborators, publishers, or new venues to share and grow your ideas.

As conference presenters, we won’t be the ones tweeting our talks. And there are lots of things we can’t control, like who shows up and whether they find our work interesting enough for “live” tweeting. But if you do value feedback and new insight into your work, planning for Twitter can be an important part of encouraging discussion–and as Alex Reid noted, “any possible discussion of one’s work would have the possibility of shaping one’s future work.”

Here are a few strategies I try to use at conferences to make my work easy to tweet:

  • Be on Twitter. Ryan Cordell has some great advice on how to start tweeting–and why. Signing on yourself is essential if you want to take advantage of a social media feedback on your talk. Not having a Twitter account might not stop people from tweeting about your work, but it will make it harder for you to find what they say and respond.
  • Include your Twitter handle on every slide. As Derek Bruff pointed out in his post on encouraging a conference backchannel, a visible hashtag is key to starting a conversation. The same goes for individual work: seeing your handle makes it easy for listeners to attribute quotes or direct questions your way. It also makes it easy for those attending to follow you and start conversations later. Consider book-ending your presentation with an introductory and closing tweet using the conference hashtag to make yourself known for any follow-up questions.
  • Use Twitter-friendly links and references. If you have a home page for a project, a blog post relevant to your talk, or even your presentation materials online, make sure it’s easy for those to be tweeted. You might use your own URL shortener, a dedicated subdomain, or schedule a tweet in advance to direct interested parties to your own version of the materials. If the conference only hosts abstracts, having your own home for the presentation will make it easier for others to get the whole picture of your research.
  • Be “tweetable.” Hilary Smith offered some advice for avoiding awkward book panels: consider how your big points would sound distilled to a tweet. As she points out: “…even if you’re not lucky enough to have an iPhone-happy audience member live-tweeting your brilliant thoughts, chances are you will still be more succinct and memorable than you would have been otherwise.” This doesn’t mean everything has to be a soundbite, but it can help you to think about the talk’s real focus and take-away points.
  • Avoid heavy jargon and excessive theory talk where possible. This doesn’t mean dumbing down your talk–but it is part of acknowledging and preparing for the potential range of your audience. Even the people in the room at your presentation might be from different backgrounds or disciplines from your own. At a big conference, non-specialists might have dropped by because they are interested–or because nothing else was on–and they can offer a lot of insight. Graduate students might have great perspective but not be fully into your field’s jargon yet. Try not to lock anyone out of the conversation unnecessarily.

Do you appreciate it when conference-goers tweet your presentation? How do you support good Twitter conversations around sharing your research?
[CC BY 2.0 Flickr Photo by ChrisDag]

Digital Killed the Analog Star, Redux: A Live Tweetchat with Anvil Academic TODAY, 12pm-1pm EST

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ProfHacker will be hosting a live Tweetchat TODAY with the core team for Anvil Academic, a press seeking to develop new standards for forms of digital publication used for promotion and tenure. ProfHacker featured Anvil’s mission last week, and an interview with its editor, Fred Moody, on Tuesday.

Have lots of questions for Anvil? Wondering if your digital project will be a good fit? Join us TODAY (Friday, October 5) from 12pm-1pm EST for a live Tweetchat with Fred (@moodyfred, Editor), Lisa Spiro (@lisaspiro, Program Manager) and Korey Jackson (@koreybjackson, Program Coordinator and Analyst). We will be using the hashtag #anvil for our live tweetchat. Adeline Koh (@adelinekoh) will be hosting the discussion. We look forward to seeing you there!

Creative Commons Image by Bluebike on Flickr.

Sabbatical Diary: Thinking about Grades

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ReportcardThis semester, I’m in an enviable position. I get to take courses I’m really enjoying, simply because I want to learn what’s being taught in them. There’s no need for me to be overly concerned with grades. How well I do or don’t do has no direct bearing on my future. I’m not applying to a doctoral program. I’m not applying to medical school. There’s no one I need to impress with a “perfect” transcript.

That leaves me free to approach grades the way, ideally, I think they ought to be approached. I’m enrolled in particular courses because I want to learn particular things. To accomplish that, I need to attend class, do the work, and ask questions as appropriate—not because I’m looking to earn a particular grade, but because I want to learn. As the semester progresses, I’ll surely have a sense of how well things are going. What grades do is help me to see whether my own self-assessment is correct. They’re indicators, from someone who knows the field far better than I do, of how I’m doing in my efforts to learn the material, and of where I might need to focus more of my attention.

That’s it. They’re not, as Alan Jacobs has pointed out, a reflection on my efforts, my person, or anything else other than my current mastery of the material.

Of course, I didn’t think this way as an undergraduate. I doubt most undergraduates do; most of the ones I’ve met don’t, at least not most of the time. Yet I suspect students would be better able to relax and more freely engage the intellectual life if they did think this way about grades. But the fact is, they frequently have to take courses they’d really rather not, and often their grades do have an impact on their post-graduation future.

Given that, what can we do to help our students at least begin to think about grades in this way? If you have some ideas, or there are strategies that have worked for you, please share them in the comments.

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by amboo213]

Open-Thread Wednesday: Best Practices for Live-Tweeting at Conferences?

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Over the last few days, a big debate over the appropriateness of live-tweeting conference panels has taken place over Twitter under the hashtag #Twittergate. Participants shared concerns of bad backchannel behavior, the accuracy of tweets, and whether tweeted research will be able to find a publisher. On the other hand, others raised points about how livetweeting conference panels increased access to research for those unable to travel to these conferences, and that tweets could work to increase visibility for scholars. Readers may be interested in

While the concerns of #Twittergate have made for intense debate, many of its issues are not new. Bethany Nowviskie (@nowviskie) blogged about using Twitter at invitation-only events in 2010 in a blog post that was later published in Hacking the Academy, and Dr Davis (@DrDavisTCE) blogged about some of the issues she ran into live-blogging conference talks.

This week, we ask: what kind of protocol for live-tweeting should conference organizers develop? What guidelines would you put in place to create a productive, collegial backchannel? Where should they be distributed–at the panel level, at the conference organization level, or both? Kelli Marshall (@kellimarshall) has a helpful guide to tweeting at conferences as does Ernesto Priego (@ernestopriego). Kathleen Fitzpatrick (@kfitz) has also posted some thoughtful advice for junior scholars who are blogging, tweeting, etc. at conferences.

What would you add to this? What should some of the best practices for livetweeting conferences be, both for organizers and participants? We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Creative Commons image by zigazou76 on Flickr.