Prompted by some misunderstandings, here is a clarification of the EOU’s position regarding Twitter.
The EOU strongly encourages delegates to promote people’s research via social media. The default is that it’s OK to tweet! If delegates express no preference, we assume that they are happy to have their research disseminated by Twitter. It is also becoming increasingly popular to follow conferences from a distance, and Twitter coverage allows those who cannot make it to still catch some exciting new developments in ornithology. We encourage you to use #EOU2015 and these tweets will show on the website homepage throughout the conference.
You can additionally use the “TwitterOK” symbol to actively invite tweets, or to express your support for twitter. No worries to those who have already printed their posters! If you want to, you can add little stickers or labels stating “TwitterOK”.
Unfortunately, however, there are also some bad personal experiences. Therefore the EOU also encourages delegates to freely express a “NoTwitter” view and points to logos to opt out: More details and #TwitterOK logos
For everyone who is not familiar with twitter and/or confused about the TwitterOK debate, there is an informative paper published in PLoS Comp Biol on ten simple rules how to use twitter at conferences. It also gives a brief intro into twitter for science and has a glossary what special symbols like @ or # mean in twitter.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4140634/pdf/pcbi.1003789.pdf
Here, I briefly post the 10 rules for everyone to consider:
1. use a short conference hashtag (for Badajoz it is #EOU2015)
2. promote the hashtag (i.e. use it with anything related to this conference or the EOU before and while the conference is running)
3. encourage tweeting! (ever had the experience that two – or more – interesting sessions happened at the same time? Well, with live tweeting you can follow up other interesting sessions. It further allows interested people not able to attend the conference to follow it remotely)
4. Conference Twitter Etiquette: Be gentle to each other and responsible for your tweets.
5. Tweet layout is very important! List speaker name to their take home messages you want to tweet and always show the conference hashtag.
6. Keep it flowing: If you want to tweet more during a talk, make use of the reply functions of your first tweet (i.e. @your_name, but use conference hashtag here as well). That way your content remains always linked and other people could jump into the discussion.
7. Separate your opinions from that of the author. That avoids misunderstandings.
8. Bring questions up from those who are not physically sitting in the audience.
9. meet up with other live tweeters (a good place would be the social media roundtable in Badajoz for instance)
10. Emphasize impact of live tweeting: Tweeting is all about spread of information and connecting with people in positive ways.
Best,
Jan