Welcome to the 1st Biotweeps Twitter Conference (#BTCon17), was held on June 28-30, 2017.
The conference was Storified; links to stories can be found here.
Biotweeps is a science communication project which features a different biologist every week. The account continues to grow in popularity and has achieved notable successes in spawning collaborations between curators and followers, media outreach, and broad engagement with the Twittersphere. As such, and given the success of similar projects (e.g. the World Seabird Twitter Conference), it seems an opportune time to bring biologists from all over the globe together for this ambitious first conference.3
The conference is split into three days. The running schedule for the conference can be found, below. Day 1 features 12 invited presenters; day 2 features 40 presenters; day 3 features science writers, an opportunity for the audience to promote their science via #sciencesentence, and science artists.
Presenters will not be tweeting directly from the Biotweeps account. Rather, they will use the hashtag #BTCon17 which will be used to track all participants, throughout. The main @biotweeps Twitter account will be re-tweeting presentations, thanks to the work of @natbat. Attendees can also simply follow the hashtag on Twitter or in a relevant program. The conference will then be archived on Storify. Information for presenters can be found here: https://biotweep.wordpress.com/btcon17/
A pdf of the conference programme can be downloaded here.
Schedule:
All times are given in UTC. Click here for a world time converter. Click the highlighted text for more details, including links to speakers and abstracts.
28th June
0700 – 2000: Invited presenters
29th June
0600 – 0800: Session 1
0900 – 1030: Session 2
1130 – 1300: Session 3
1400 – 1530: Session 4
1630 – 1830: Session 5
1930 – 2100: Session 6
30th June
1000 – 1300: #sciencesentence
1500 – 1600: Science writers
1700 – 2100: Science artists
#sciencesentence
What is #sciencesentence? It’s a chance for followers of the conference to join the conversation. Can you sum up your science in fewer than 140 characters? Give it a go, and use the #sciencesentence hashtag. Infographics are allowed, links to videos, journals or additional text are not. Let’s get some conversations started!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- What is a Twitter Conference?
A Twitter conference is a social media event that occurs from wherever you might be currently seated. This event is brings together biologists and interested non-biologists from around the world to encourage communication and collaboration in an online setting. - How do you participate in a Twitter Conference?
All you need is a Twitter account and handle (e.g. @biotweeps). You can obtain one of these very easily at www.twitter.com. After getting a twitter profile, you only need to search for the hashtag #BTCon17 and/or follow Biotweeps to see all posts that are related to the conference. While it is straightforward to spectate only, without a Twitter account, we recommend setting up an account to get the most out of the conference. - But what if I don’t know how to use Twitter?
There are many guides on how to use Twitter online, for example this guide by the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU): http://www.bou.org.uk/tweeting-better-1/. Also check out this video to help you get started with Twitter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0xbjIE8cPM
Contact
Get in touch via Twitter or email.
Biotweeps: (@biotweeps; biotweeps@gmail.com)
Dr. Anthony Caravaggi (@thonoir)
Dr. Katherine James (@KJames IntBio)
We are extremely grateful to Natalie Downe (@natbat) for her work in programming the retweeting of conference-related tweets from the @biotweeps account.
Biotweeps 