Twitter Chat on Advocacy

Following on from Thing 15 on Advocacy for Libraries, Rudai 23 planned a twitter chat on this particular topic. As I hadn't been able to take part in the Google Hangouts on Air, I was keen to take part in this get-together.

I know that twitter chats take place but I usually don't remember until after the fact so I marked this one in my calendar. Rudai 23 also posted a number of reminders on twitter so there was no danger in forgetting.  A link was also helpfully provided to the questions ahead of the chat so there was plenty of time to think about your answers and what was important to you.

I had never thought a great deal about advocacy which is why Thing 15 and the twitter chat were so helpful. It was great to get different opinions.

Taking part raised the following with me:

• We very nearly didn't get to answer all the questions so perhaps 9 questions was ambitious?  I don't know what the normal number is.
• Not all participants used the question number at the start of their answer so you had to figure out what question they were answering. 
• I went to the twitter feed for #r23chat as I thought this was the best way to see the feed coming in. I don't know whether this is the best way but it worked reasonably well for me. Perhaps there's a better way?
• I was quite slow at typing any responses so things had moved on a bit by the time my response appeared.
• There is such a thing as a library calculator. I didn't know this so a couple of people forwarded the link to me. Also a short course on advocacy was highlighted - again a useful tool to have access to.
• Rudai 23 is going to produce a storify on the twitter chat so I'm interested to see how this works.

Would I take part in a twitter chat again? I would. I'd mark it in my online calendar to make sure that the time was set aside. I'd use my tablet next time as the smartphone was a bit small for sustained typing (and it was a bit hot after holding it for an hour).