#plantbiology15 is coming to an end after a fabulous week of sessions, talks, workshops and social events. For those of you who use Twitter, you’ll know that I’m referring to a conference (actually, it was the American Society of Plant Biologists Meeting 2015, which took place in Minneapolis). For those of you who are not signed up to Twitter, you probably guessed it was a conference, but you won’t be privy to the ‘parallel universe’ that exists during conferences and meetings these days.
The reason I attended the meeting was to run a career workshop and take part in other areas of a very extensive conference side programme. My workshop was well attended, with 80 PhD students and postdoctoral researcher delegates who heard about a latest survey of plant scientist career destinations, then took part in a SWOT analysis of a plant science researcher and finally practised their communication and networking skills in readiness for the main conference. With my two co-presenters, Ian Street and Molly Hanlon, being enthusiastic advocates of social media, our delegates were very much encouraged to join Twitter and start making the most of this social media tool straightaway. Many of them did and are now following us (and vice versa).
With its community of ‘Tweeters’ posting soundbites from speakers’ talks, this alternative side of conferences also provides delegates with practical information, colourful photos and useful links to additional data. Even the occasional video and joke is posted from time to time. I say these tweets add an extra dimension for the delegates attending conferences, but for those not able to attend, it acts as a remote window into a conference, building up a story of the whole event (usually turned into a ‘storifed’ post-meeting super-tweet). Often you can see tweets on the conference hashtag# from non-delegates back in the lab saying how jealous they are of those attending, since the tweets usually paint a colourful picture of the meeting highlights, both serious and social. That said, they are usually appreciative of the nuggets of information being disseminated to the Twitter community from the session talks and posters.
Of course, the other side of the new ‘Twittersphere’ to bear in mind is that if you are speaking at a meeting (or even dancing at the final party!), your words and actions may be being broadcast to a wider audience, so be careful not to say or do anything you might not want to ‘go public’.
Well, another session is about to start so I’d better get off now so I can start tweeting about it. If you’re still in doubt about trying out Twitter, please refer to the picture opposite, which I saw when visiting a fellow colleague in Sweden and which was the final slide of my career workshop at #plantbiology15.
PS. My Twitter handle is @Bioscicareer if you want to follow me.