A collection of posts about livetweeting / liveblogging science and other conferences

by @JoBrodie brodiesnotes.blogspot.com

This is an update and a repost of an older post from 2010, copied in full below with redirect on old one.

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EDIT: 8 July 2012 - this post has gone through several revisions and is now more generally about livetweeting events. There's a nod to practical aspects too as well as a little bit on the ethical aspects of livetweeting conferences, which was my original slant. I've attended (live, or virtually via hashtag) numerous medical research conferences and wince whenever anything is a bit overhyped or, as I say below if "unpublished pilot data is reported as more certain than it is."

A companion blog post to this one is Health charity conferences: policy thoughts on liveblogging and there's another one mentioned below, in relation to capturing tweets during and after the conference (see reference 9).

Added 13 March 2017
35. Livetweeting WOW (the festival)
@bitoclass
13 March 2017
http://bitoclass.tumblr.com/post/158330593375/livetweeting-wow 
Practical tips on pre-event preparation (familiarise yourself with names, pics, bios & Wikipedia, subject, programme) and using Storify to gather tweets and add context. 

I've also written a brief overview and more detailed post on using Storify.

Added 1 March 2015 
34. Let's have a discussion about live-tweeting academic conferences
Green tea and velociraptors (Jon Tennant)
13 November 2014
http://blogs.egu.eu/network/palaeoblog/2014/11/13/lets-have-a-discussion-about-live-tweeting-academic-conferences/ 
"To tweet about someone’s work without their knowledge or permission is disrespectful and unethical. Several people have stated that they consider the default to be ‘tweetable’ – are the authors aware of this? If not, and you haven’t checked, you better show some god damn courtesy in future and not do anything you are not explicitly permitted to do." 


Added 6 October 2014
33. EIGHT tips for using Twitter around health-related events
Health Summit / Inis Communications
Date unknown but seems to coincide with #mHealth13 event 
http://www.iniscommunication.com/PDF/mHealth13.pdf
I like (8) Be a Twitter advocate - remind other advocates that they can also tweet from the event.

 Added 1 September 2014
32. Ten simple rules of live tweeting at scientific conferences
PLOS Computational Biology
21 August 2014
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003789

10 tweetable (140 chars) rules with advice for science-conference tweeting.

Added 19 January 2014
31. Ten tips for tweeting at conferences
ProfHacker / Chronicle.com (Brian Croxall)
6 January 2013
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/ten-tips-for-tweeting-at-conferences/54281

Added 6 April 2013
30. Healthcare social media: the return of #twittergate
Talking about speech and language blog
30 March 2013
http://slt2b.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/healthcare-social-media-return-of.html

29. Out of the ivory tower and into the crowds: how social media has transformed academic conferences
Evidently Cochrane blog
28 March 2013
http://evidentlycochrane.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/out-of-the-ivory-tower-and-into-the-crowds-how-social-media-has-transformed-academic-conferences/

Added 25 March 2013
28. Thwarting spammers on hashtag livetweeted events
My own blog
22 March 2013
http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/thwarting-spammers-on-hashtag.html 
Type into Twitter's search, or smartphone Twitter apps' search boxes a keystring that tells Twitter to return tweets containing the hashtag but not the spam links, eg
#hashtag -x.co 
where x.co is the root of the spam addresses (Twitter will ignore x.co/abcd and x.co/efgh)

27. Twitter guidelines for #ukcc21 in 2013
Oxford2013, The Cochrane Collaboration
Date not given but assume March 2013-ish
http://oxford2013.cochrane.org/twitter-guidelines 
Encouragement to tweet at the conference with a useful reminder not to assume everyone following you knows what the hashtag you're tweeting with means, so tell them every now and then.

Added 20 July 2012
26: Using free tools to capture a handful of tweets or a bunch
My own blog
19 July 2012
http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/using-free-tools-to-capture-handful-of.html
Bit self-serving I suppose (given that I wrote it) but I have made quite a study of capturing event / hashtagged tweets and I think this is a pretty clear explanation of how to use some of the free tools while acknowledging that there are other paid-for options. 

Added 20 July 2012
25: Gender discrimination at CHI 2012
Oopsohno blog
19 July 2012
http://oopsohno.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/gender-discrimination-at-chi-2012/
Although my collection of posts is now more about some of the technical and social media aspects of running an event its original direction was more about the ethics of sharing (via social media) live comments from speakers at scientific events, in relation to unsettled science particularly in the area of medical health research. Sarah's post covers a different type of ethics - the way that gender  differences can be unwittingly reinforced if we don't watch out for it.

Added 20 July 2012
24: Reflections on events
Mark Braggins' blog
24 June 2012
http://markbraggins.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/reflections-on-events/

Themed checklists for different aspects of a conference and unconference events with some good advice and, as the title suggests, reflections on making an event run smoothly for those attending physically and virtually. 

Added; 8 July 2012
23: How to Live-tweet from an Event
Social Media Today
6 July 2012
http://socialmediatoday.com/node/586166
Very good advice for event tweeting, focusing on the three phases of an event: before, during and after (a lot of people post stuff a few days after an event so if you're trying to capture stuff about said event don't 'shut things down' too soon). Also useful pointers on tools you can use on laptop or smartphone to autotweet the hashtag, eg I use Tweetchat on my laptop - sign in with Twitter and whenever you tweet in that window it automatically appends the hashtag, saving valuable seconds ;)

Added: 29 December 2011

22. a4u expo London Agenda

a4u expo

Date unknown

http://www.a4uexpo.com/london/agenda/

I came across this because of the MoreNiche affiliate marketing website which I keep a keen eye on (as they're selling a variety of products but are a bit shy about publishing the evidence for them) and spotted that their people go off and speak at events, including this expo. What impressed me about this was the prominence given to hashtags at the event - each session has its own hashtag and the top of the agenda has a banner which explains what a tag is and reminds people to check the session tag for each event they go to. Pretty good.

Added: 4 December 2011

21. How Twitter enhanced my conference experience

Mark Ryan

3 December 2011

http://smhcop.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/how-twitter-enhanced-my-conference-experience/

Less about blogging at events and more about the social benefits that can arise from Twitter and blogs making it really easy for people who haven't yet met one another in real life to do so. Obviously these tools are helpful in discovering likeminded folk online in the first place.

20. Say Hey to Hashtags and Handles

Susan Sawyer

25 October 2011

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-sawyers/twitter-social-events_b_1028480.html

Good example of a conference getting everything nicely hooked up with the hashtag, delegates' twitter handles, good communication etc.

I think when I started this blog post back in Feb 2010 I was rather waiting for this sort of thing to become the norm. It probably has in the geekier / science-ier conferences, fingers crossed that this trickles to all the other conferences where delegates might like this sort of thing. Obviously I appreciate that some delegates don't give two hoots about tweeting and blogging etc :)

Added: 10 October 2011

19. Live tweeting an AGM: Lessons from @Campbel2412

28 September 2011

http://nhssm.org.uk/live-tweeting-an-agm-lessons-from-campbel2412/

Practical advice for official events tweetists and how best to prepare and parcel up the workload. For example this particular hospital event had speakers whose photos were taken before their speech so that these could be sent out as they started, along with their name and job title. Good points made about linking to stuff on the organisational website (and a reminder to make sure in advance that pages you might want to link to are up to date). Also highlights practical things like being able to point to a page on parking information.

Also it is, as the blog curator has noted, rather well written - very clear. And it's written in precisely the sort of way that managers probably like the look of - what went well, what they'll do differently next time. Good template I should think.

Added: 9 June 2011

18. Wi-Fi checklist for unconference of hack-day organisers

Andy Mabbett aka @pigsonthewing

9 June 2011

http://pigsonthewing.org.uk/wi-fi-checklist-unconference-hack-day/

How to make your delegates happy - pre-empt the most common conference Wi-Fi problems with this handy checklist. Repeatedly having to log in is no fun at all.

Added: 30 May 2011

17. Science Communication and Public Engagement: What Can Twitter Tell Us?

David Waldock

30 May 2011

http://davidwaldock.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/science-communication-and-public-engagement-what-can-twitter-tell-us/

Interesting look at the recording of tweets (by Storify in this case) and subsequent analysis of their content by Wordle.

"So, live Tweets, to me, represent the thinking of people as they are in the situation; there is no time to reflect, to consider meaning or to parse it into an alternate interpretation: a live Twitter feed can approximate being inside the mind of people present at an event, and you can bring a range of tools to bear on this record and use it to notice things which might not otherwise have been obvious."

Added: 1 August 2010

16. The Great ASCO Tweetup

Brian McGowan

1 July 2010

http://meetingsnet.com/social-media/0701-great-asco-tweetup/

Examples of social media, including Twitter, use at a massive (30,000 attendees) cancer conference including guidance on slides from speakers who were happy for their output to be microblogged, and disucssions on setting up some 'best practice' guidelines for organisations. Mention is also made of the real-time tweetstream which might be available as an adjunct during someone's presentation - I am coming round to the idea that this can be more of a distraction than a benefit, although I do quite enjoy seeing them. I like his use of the terms intrasession tweeting (to describe tweeting from within a session), intersession (describing interaction with tweets from another session in some cases leading people to migrate to a seminar with more interesting content) and extrasession tweeting (describing general helpful information, shared via Twitter).

Added: 18 March 2010

15. 10 Ways Social Media Will Transform Events in 2010

Samuel J. Smith

12 January 2010

http://www.eventcoup.com/10-ways-social-media-will-transform-events-in

"Attendees will register for your event if their contacts are attending. In the future, knowing if friends or business associates are attending an event will become part of the attendee’s decision process. Social media tools that check to see if my Linkedin connections, Twitter followers or Facebook friends are attending an event already exist. Over time, I think that we will see more of these tools implemented in events."

14. News from Scientific Meetings

Mark Zweig and Emily DeVoto

Date not listed

http://www.healthnewsreview.org/tips-for-understanding-studies.php#tip4

Not about liveblogging but general information about news reports of conference presentations - "The current press coverage of scientific meetings may be characterized as 'too much, too soon.' Results are frequently presented to the public as scientifically sound evidence rather than as preliminary findings with still uncertain validity. With some effort on the part of meeting organizers, journalists, and scientists, it will be possible to better serve the public."

13. How and why should conference organisers use Twitter?

Cathy Aronson

30 November 2009

http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/smart-talk/smart-talk-02-crack-web-marketing/social-media/63375

Perspective from a very different field - discussions on intellectual property, tweeting increasing the marketability of a conference and one of the commenters raises the idea that "obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy." That commenter also found benefit in reading back the tweets from his talk so he could see where he'd managed to get his point across, and where not.

12. spectacle at Web2.0 Expo... from my perspective

danah boyd

24 November 2009

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectacle_at_we.html

Article on a particularly unpleasant experience at a conference where twitter took more of the centre stage than the presenter due to a combination of an unfamiliar set-up, dreadful lighting, fidgety crowd and misunderstandings. Basically, when liveblogging goes bad.

11. Should You Be Tweeting?

Laura Bonetta

30 October 2009

http://friendfeed-media.com/50c126f2ed05e7f3c8a24954f9d03528e07460b5

This is an article from the journal Cell - I put this in just to remind myself that not everyone can be bothered with Twitter etc ;)

10. Screencast: my unsuccessful hunt for the official EASD hashtag #EASD09

Andrew Spong

20 September 2009

http://screenr.com/YD7

Conference organisers might as well take the lead on the social media for their conference - deciding on a sensible conference hashtag (and if it's stupid, delegates will create their own ad hoc) and publicising this on conference material beforehand if at all possible - or at least posting a few tweets containing said hashtag, from their official channel. As the post above points out, it also helps with the social aspect of the meeting.

9. What! No event hashtag?

Brian Kelly

20 September 2009

http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/what-no-event-hashtag/

Post considering the practical benefits of having a clear hashag - social aspects (meeting up, particularly at a smaller event) are important but the long term benefit is that any tweets containing hashtags can be aggregated and stored, as a record of the event and the links that were shared.


Edit: 8 July 2012 - since Twitter changed its terms of service in 2010 it's become much more like hard work to collect hashtagged tweets and unless you use a paid-for service, or have coding skills and a server you'll probably have to do it slightly manually.

For more on this have a look at GrabChat or SearchHash for hashtag storage - for watching tweets in real-time, have a look at things like Tweetdeck, Twitterfall and Monitter. Or see my post on this Watching conference tweets in real time - how best? and Following conference hashtag tweets in real time and saving them for later.

8. Amongst The Science Bloggers

Jack of Kent

23 August 2009

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2009/08/amongst-science-bloggers.html

A very interesting take from the perspective of a presenter, who read the tweets afterwards. In this particular session attendees were asked not to tweet the substance of the talk because it may have been taken as legal advice (as a lawyer was speaking), this possibly meant that people found other things to tweet about, not all of it helpful.

7. Live-tweeting the World Conference of Science Journalists

Ed Yong

30 June 2009

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/06/live-tweeting_the_world_conference_of_science_journalists.php

Really positive post on the benefits of liveblogging a conference; the benefit being for the blogger as well as for any public audience. Ed tweeted from #wcsj (World Conf. Sci Journalists) and found it to be a useful experience for himself. Probably the content of the presentations put this type of conference in a very different category from the Cold Spring Harbor one, but this post provides a record of one person's enjoyment at being involved in this way.

This very much echoes my experience of livetweeting from both Science Online conferences in London, #wcsj and a couple of other science communication things I've been at.

6. All the conference stuff that's not fit to print

Isis the Scientist

17 June 2009

http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/2009/06/all_the_conference_stuff_thats.php

Very interesting post - scientists may prefer a forum in which they can discuss pilot data with their peers without the fear of having some, as one of the commenters puts it, 'blogdouche' tweeting everything. Some of the comments are... quite robust.

5. Creating a "blog-safe" icon for conference presentations: suggestions?

Daniel MacArthur

17 June 2009

http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/06/creating_a_blog-safe_icon_for.php

Intriguing idea of having some sort of icon on presentations (or abstracts) which indicates that the speakers are happy that their talk can be liveblogged.

Comment 3 is a peach. Comment 5 raises an interesting issue. Comment 13 contains this eloquently brief summary - "Figure out the policy (I'd suggest that bloggers and media follow the same rules and it be the same rule for ALL sessions) state it up front, in the program, on the website and in the registration package. Done. Finished. Put it to rest."

4. To tweet or not to tweet – social media and the scientific meeting

Andrew Maynard

3 June 2009

http://2020science.org/2009/06/03/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet/

Sensible consideration of the appropriateness, at different types of conferences, of tweeting or liveblogging. Plenty of comments adding additional perspectives and Ruth Seeley's (comment 1) makes very good points.

For me the take home message from all of these discussions is that it's probably important for conference organisers to at least have had a bit of a think about where they stand on liveblogging - I'd prefer that they weren't too restrictive though (however Commenter 8 disagrees with me). In the context of medical research charities (my perspective is from charities who are members of the AMRC - Association of Medical Research Charities) my concern is - perennially - that unpublished pilot data is reported as more certain than it is.

3. On the challenges of conference blogging

Daniel MacArthur

3 June 2009

http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/06/on_the_challenges_of_conferenc.php   

Daniel MacArthur's own blog emphasising that he feels Genomeweb's complaint (see #2 below) was a valid one and that conference organisers can't really expect to hold news media and bloggers to different standards. In this case the result was that the conference organisers clarified their policy on liveblogging.

"As the number of scientists engaged in online media continues to grow, it is crucial that meeting attendees be aware in advance of what their responsibilities are regarding communication of results."

There are some really good points in this clearly written post on the wider themes of conference attendees engaging with the presentations - more positives than negatives.

Commenter 3 expresses concern that the CSHL guidelines were unduly restrictive in that they required anyone reporting to gain permission from the speakers (possibly impractical for tweeting purposes). There's perhaps something in the argument that blogged conferences get more publicity...

All other comments are worth reading, some very good points in there.

2. Cold Spring Harbor Wants Scientist Bloggers to Follow Media Rules

Elizabeth Pennisi

2 June 2009

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/06/cold-spring-har.html

News report from Science (magazine) on Daniel MacArthur's experience of liveblogging from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting. The news service Genomeweb was a bit puzzled that journalists had been asked to sign forms restricting what they could report whereas other attendees didn't have this restriction (they're not given a form to sign).

1. Advice for conference organisers

Adam Tinworth

4 April 2007

http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2007/04/advice_for_conference_organisers.html

A plea from a blogger for conference organisers to provide free wifi. The conference organiser replied pointing out that the venue charged £20 for a wifi connection, although in the US the blogger has experienced conferences where each seat has a power socket and free wifi.

I certainly think free or very inexpensive wifi should be available if you want to encourage people to share content about and related to your conference. Possibly the building itself will dictate the number of sockets but no harm in finding out where they are and letting people know. See also #18 above, which has a checklist for conference organisers.

Stempra event: Promoting non peer reviewed science?

Disclaimer: I work for Diabetes UK and UCL; these views are my own.
Recently I attended an event, on 'Promoting non peer reviewed science' about research that hasn't been through the whole publication and peer review process, hosted by Stempra (science, technology, engineering and medicine public relations association) which was held in a comfortable upstairs room in a London pub - there were about 20 of us in attendance. I took along my laptop to make some notes and here they are.

Lucy Harper led the discussion - she's the Communications Manager at 'SfAM', the Society for Applied Microbiology and she edits their members' magazine 'Microbiologist'. Each year, like many similar organisations, their society has professional meetings. Such meetings often involve presentations of preliminary data and the publicity given to these meetings means that journalists may well be present in the audience. What's the appropriate thing to do here? Forewarn the speakers and find out if any are happy to be interviewed, and mention that other people may be tweeting or does this run the risk that the speakers will make changes (ie remove bits) to their presentation. Scientists can be (not unreasonably) wary of publicising preliminary data - there's the fear that future publication might be harder if the content has been widely shared in advance (see Ingelfinger rule, below) but also the concern that sharing data via non-published means could result in others 'scooping' them. One scientist that Lucy spoke to wasn't so concerned about potential risks to future publications, but was worried that a larger and better financed research team might take advantage of their data.

An audience member commented that even if Twitter or news media were taken out of the equation this fear of being scooped didn't really make sense since the potential scoopers were likely in the audience and hearing from the presenter directly, although the reach of Twitter is obviously much larger than just the room. I'm aware of the contrast with a few scientists (Peter Murray-Rust, Cameron Neylon, Jean-Claude Bradley), all of whom have spoken at either Science Blogging 2008 or Science Online 2009 (in London, Science Online 2010 is in September) on making their results available in real-time by posting them on the web and getting immediate feedback from comments. I'm not sure if chemistry / biophysics is less amenable to being scooped by other teams than other fields making this a 'safer' thing to do, let alone a helpful and completely transparent way to conduct the research that is paid for by the public (through the research councils).

On the concept of further reach I was reminded of similar comments made around the time that Daniel MacArthur tweeted freely from a genetics conference while journalist delegates had been required to sign an agreement on how they would use conference material. In this case, the conference subsequently changed its regulations so that anyone - mainstream media, bloggers or microbloggers (those on Twitter etc) - would be aked to sign an agreement in advance. I've collected quite a few of the blog posts relating to this (http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2010/02/curated-posts-liveblogging-science.html), as part of a wider-themed post myself on the issue of tweeting from scientific conferences. My particular interest in this is tweeting from medical health conferences - Diabetes UK (where I work) has an annual professional conference at which new data is presented, not always published / peer-reviewed of course, and I expect that with each passing year there may be more people tweeting from the audience. I don't think we, or other charities in a similar position, can reasonably expect to prevent people from doing this but I don't think it hurts to have some ground rules (well, suggestions) given that this info goes into the public domain and may be picked up by someone who isn't aware of the full context. I'm not sure I agree with putting conferences under Chatham House Rules although I acknowledge the argument that it might help scientists feel more comfortable in sharing more info.

Re context: this point was highlighted by one of Lucy's scientists as well - the quality of data is likely to be deprecated in a tweet and can easily be misinterpreted by the 140 characters limit, with speculation and caution from the speaker turning into 'fact'.

Ingelfinger rule"The policy of considering a manuscript for publication only if its substance has not been submitted or reported elsewhere. This policy was promulgated in 1969 by Franz J. Ingelfinger, then the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. The aim of the Ingelfinger rule was to protect the Journal from publishing material that had already been published and thus had lost its originality." Source: http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13488

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct#Responsibility_of_authors_and_of_coauthors
and Ingelfinger Over-Ruled: The Role of the Web in the Future of Refereed Medical Journal Publishing (2000)
http://cogprints.org/1703/1/harnad00.lancet.htm

If the Ingelfinger rule was extended so that any mention of data precluded its publication then this might well be a case of the communications movement taking a step backwards, limiting the sharing of information. If something has been presented as a poster at a conference this shouldn't prevent it from being published in a journal and this is the approach that SfAM takes.

I don't know what the percentage of new or preliminary data is presented at conferences - obviously it's not 'old' info, but some stuff is surely in press and so there must be a continuum of data from the very fresh and unexamined to much more pored-over stuff. Nonetheless a lot of what gets reported from scientific conferences hasn't been through the full process of peer review, either the review process to get into a journal publication or the 'post-marketing' scrutiny once other scientists get their mitts on it - an example of post-publishing scrutiny might be the Rapid Responses from the BMJ, although these comments aren't peer-reviewed either of course.

My job at Diabetes UK involves ­me answering public enquiries on the science of diabetes and this can include results publicised from our Annual Professional Conference. If something preliminary has been mentioned in the papers it may take some time before a formal publication is available so this means that the status of the information is 'lower' than something which has been through the process. That's a bit of a simplification as the peer-review process isn't perfect and just because something is published doesn't mean that it's 'right' - but you know what I mean ;)

Part of my reason for showing such an interest in the publicising of data, perhaps via Twitter, was my concern that someone following the conference hashtag might read more into a tweet than they should - I don't particularly enjoy having to explain to someone that a piece of early stage research has somehow been translated as being further forward and more certain than it is, particularly if it's work that we've funded.

I've previously written about my thoughts on stories in the media and how they are understood by those reading them - this is my experience of over six years responding to enquirers calls and emails about something they've read in the papers. I've quoted it below because the rest of the blog post isn't as relevant here.

"Firstly, some observations of my own. Often a story is perfectly clearly written but the headline lets it down. Or there's a throwaway brief para which contains an otherwise minor error but in context gives the wrong impression. I don't think that view is going to startle anyone.

What you *might* be less aware of is how wrongly people can apprehend, or remember, a story they've read in the newspapers - although if you think about it, not really that much of a surprise. Probably someone's done some research on this but I confess I am ignorant of it.

People have rung in wanting to know about something they read "last month in the papers", only for me to find that it was actually *months* ago, my record for the longest gap is three and a half years. Memories - not so reliable."
Source: http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2010/04/healthy-journalism-challenges-and.html

I'm not entirely sure how the press release world works - I know we put them out, but presumably the researchers' host university will put out releases too and, if the research is at the point of being published then journals might pitch in too. Hopefully the universe doesn't end up with three separate releases on the same topic but for all I know it might. Only in the case of research-about-to-be-published has it been through a peer review process.

It seems that most of us in the room could live with non-peer-reviewed information being publicised but only as long as the preliminary nature of the work is made clear.

I also thought about other ways in which preliminary work might be publicised. Our charity, and I'm sure other charities too, will write articles which include progress reports for the work that we fund. Inherent in its 'progress report' nature is the implication that this work is at an early stage, and it's entirely possible that as the work progresses it will 'change direction'. Talking about the research that we fund is an essential part of what we do - people raise money for us and they have a right to know how that money is being spent and what is happening. We do also want to tell people a little about the process of research, for example that it takes a long time and that each project generally looks at one small aspect of research. Every charity has a responsibility to publish basic information about the breakdown of spending costs but almost all take this a step further and use this as an opportunity to talk about the research itself, the people undertaking it and any collaborations between institutions. The resulting document is not only a fundraising tool but it lets everyone in the charity know what work is being done.

Someone made the interesting comment that even if the data is at the point where it hasn't been peer-reviewed, the application form for the project that generated the data has been peer-reviewed. While that's true I'm not sure how satisfactory that is. It was also pointed out that the Government's reports aren't peer-reviewed, though they do go through an editing process. Similarly conference abstracts go through a version of peer review, beyond merely editorial control.

Even if journalists aren't present at a conference the output of those tweeting from it (in a delegate capacity) is part of the public record and may well be being followed by journalists not 'in the room' who might spot a story and follow it up.

In addition to material not being peer reviewed we discussed whether members of the public are aware that the concept of peer review might be used as a benchmark of quality (except in the case of homeopathy which seems to be a fine example of peer review failing to pick up and winnow out nonsense, also Andrew Wakefield's paper). There's a useful document from Sense About Science which explains peer review to a non-specialist audience (http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/30, see also http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/29/). Peer review is often criticised as something that's subjective / biased and a very imperfect system although it's 'the best we've got' at the moment, perhaps.

A couple of final thoughts which didn't quite fit anywhere else...

How should an opinion from an esteemed person at a conference be reported, if at all. It's all very well with the 'nullius in verba' (the Royal Society's motto which means 'on the word of no-one' or 'take nobody's word for it' - ie don't be overly impressed by authority, just because someone important says something it doesn't mean that it's true) but what happens if someone comes out with a great soundbite? If people are speaking more colloquially at a conference (and this is understood by those in the room but not necessarily by those outside) then there's a risk that it will get mistranslated. In the last six years working at Diabetes UK I've read plenty of news articles where a scientist is quoted as saying that there will be a cure for diabetes within the next five years - not unexpectedly people ring us up wanting to know what this is all about. If I heard someone say this at a conference to be honest I'd simply ignore it, I wouldn't even say "so and so says...".

Finally - science blogs. The blogs themselves are in the most part not peer-reviewed, although I think those hosted at the Research Blogging platform restrict themselves to writing about peer-reviewed research and many other blog platforms host blogs that go through an editorial process.

This blog post hasn't been peer reviewed though I did send it to Lucy Harper, the speaker, to check that I'd not misunderstood, misinterpreted or misrepresented anything :)

TweetNotes - tool for archiving hashtagged tweets at events and conferences etc

Shortened URL for this post http://is.gd/bGqqZ

EDIT: The developers of TweetNotes sadly pulled the plug on this rather nice tool.

I have just been invited to have a look at TweetNotes, a twitter hashtag difference engine from The Extraordinaries.

I'm using this one as an example: http://app.beextra.org/tweetnotes/event/id/ntc/session/2046 - this is a collection, which has already been set up, of hashtags and associated information from a conference that is still ongoing but winding down. I don't know how to set up one of these TweetNotes to record a hashtag either in advance or on the hoof while at an event - I think it's in beta at the moment.

That page sits within all tweets that came from the NTC conference, all the subpages are listed here http://app.beextra.org/tweetnotes/event/id/ntc/session/2046
It does look rather good as a service.

Each tweet appears with the tweeter's avatar (FriendFeed take note) and appears quite tweet-like (context is there: timestamped with the link going to the original tweet, and all hashtags appear as clickable links which take you back to the Twitter search).

You can also vote on every tweet which is new to me. As a consequence of that there's also a 'highest rated' tab which lets you see whose tweets went to the top of the class. In the example given no-one appears to have voted yet but early days.

The tab that really made me sit up was 'Media' - at the time of writing I'm investigating if this is doing what I think it is. I think it's harvesting all of the URLs that people post in their hashtagged tweets and aggregating them separately, into photos, videos, blog posts etc. If so - that's a bit awesome and would be immensely useful. It looks like all the URLs are in full, rather than their bit.ly miniaturisations - a plus for those who enjoy glimpsing the information contained in a full URL.

It may actually be something manually added, which is less exciting of course, but would still be useful, if fiddly.

There is a tab for the 'organizer's notes', for the organiser to add in extra information, obviously a good idea. Finallly 'people' lists all of the twitterers who've added a hashtagged tweet - it looks like it's done in a tag cloud style with those tweeting heavily given more prominence on the page compared with those who've posted fewer tweets.

I heard about the tool because I followed the link from one of @askmanny's tweets - http://www.theextraordinaries.org/2010/04/conferences-and-their-hashtags.html - and then I commented on the blog post in response to the discussion on saving tweets for later.

In the second point the author @benrigby notes that hashtags with decimal points in don't work - the plan had been to filter each session with a kind of decimalised hasthag eg #ntc10.sessionnameX - but this apparently wasn't very successful (although it looks like the hashtags show up as clickable links in TweetNotes which suggests it isn't a complete washout).

Generally people have got round this by using two hashtags, eg #ntc10 #session1 but TwapperKeeper has a useful feature exploiting the exclamation mark. Like some sort of Twittery mass spectrometer using #tag !a will filter a tweet to the A folder and #tag !b to the B folder. I've not used it much, but I've tested it and it seems to work fine.

I'm in favour of short hashtags where letters and numbers are kept reasonably separate, ie #33aa rather than #3a3a, because those tweeting on phone keyboards will thank you if they don't have to keep toggling among different screens (on an iPhone the letters are on one screen, numbers on another and the hashtag symbol on a third). So please put numbers at the end or beginning, not in the middle.

In fact, mildly useful tip for iPhone Tweetdeck users - type the hashtag once on a tweet, press Cancel, then choose Save - then whenever you click the new tweet button it's preloaded with your hashtag.

What else would I like?
I appreciate that I can harvest a PDF of tweets from whatthehashtag (wthashtag), although the time interval is a bit fiddly - I think you can get it in 24 hour batches.

The current set up on TweetNotes is very readable but quite 'heavy' on the page because each tweet has so much of its meta information with it - a 'printer friendly' or PDf version might be a plus, for archival purposes (in addition to the full version).

I think this has real potential as being a hub for tweeted information on a conference / event or a session at one. If I was tempted to add anything it might be a tab for real world registration information (how to get to the venue, where to go once there) - I expect that most events and conferences will have their own website attached anyway, but it might be a bonus for more ad hoc events. Possibly...

How easy is it be set up to record a hashtag? Does it require a registration step (I think it does), or will it auto-record a hashtag once it reaches critical mass as wthashtag does? I see that it's not intended as a replacement for other real-time hashtag monitoring (such as Tweetdeck) but I'd be interested to know how it handles an incoming stream in real time.

How long will the archive be kept? Is it 'run' automatically from an RSS of the twitter search (which eventually appears to degrade) or is it more like FriendFeed which freakishly seems to be able to hold on to tweets that are a couple of years old.

When does it go live?

------------ Related posts ------------
1. Following conference hashtag tweets in real time and saving them for later
http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2010/01/following-conference-hashtag-tweets-in.html
2. Curated posts: liveblogging science conferences - my thoughts on tweeting medical research charity conferences
http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2010/02/curated-posts-liveblogging-science.html
(a collection of posts from others, with my comments)
3. Health charity conferences: policy thoughts on liveblogging
http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2010/01/health-charity-conferences-policy.html
(from the perspective of hosting a conference where new health research info may be presented, and how to handle its dissemination appropriately)

Health charity conferences: policy thoughts on liveblogging

Unless I can do some impressive editing, I'm brewing the world's largest blog post (already at 12 pages but I suspect I'll soon come to my senses).

It's really a guide or perhaps even a 'policy document' full of suggestions and practical tips on liveblogging (from the perspective of conference organisers at a health charity organising a conference for researchers and healthcare professionals) based on my having attended a few conferences where liveblogging / livetweeting has been done, and a fair bit of reading others' experiences online.

Hopefully the following are fairly standard but if I've missed anything please comment below or via Twitter (@JoBrodie).

Pretty much all of the recommendations and thoughts below are explained further in the large document, but I thought I'd drip feed this first to see if people disagree with the direction. I'll spruce them up for the final document, just 'getting them out there' for now :)

Some of my suggested recommendations
Decide if you are going to have a policy about liveblogging or leave things to take their own course. At the very least have a bit of a think about how your organisation might engage with delegates who blog about your conference, thinking about the (many) advantages and the (probably small) potential drawbacks.

Your policy might be of the type where you state that you will ask all delegates NOT to tweet (boo) or that you will leave well alone (yay, but only up to a point), but it's a lot better if it's nuanced and offers a 'code of conduct'. It also helps if it's findable on your website. It will undoubtedly benefit from input from staff in conference/events teams, social media people, science /research teams.

Develop an internal policy on how you will deal with any problem tweets or twitterers (unlikely, but not a bad idea to think through some eventualities) – ignore, engage, countertweet etc.

Assuming liveblogging will not be blocked, include in it a basic list of suggested Dos and Dont's for your conference (this may change depending on the type of conference). Encourage people to tweet appropriately and perhaps provide information on signing up to Twitter (eg see Twitter's help pages), or how to start a blog. Recommend that people use their real name so that others can find them but remind people that Google has an uncanny ability to record everything, so best not to pick fights.

Decide on a sensible hashtag, taking smartphone users into account. Remind people that their tweets can have greater reach if they pepper their tweets occasionally with the tagged health condition too, eg #cancer, #diabetes, as people will be following those words too.

Publish the hashtag on all conference material and refer people to your policy on conference liveblogging either on the web, or include a page in delegates' packs. Begin using the hashtag a few days (or weeks, if a major conference) before the conference so that the channel has content when people start to look for it, and to help build up a buzz about the conference.

Find out information about the wifi availability in the conference centre and make sure your staff at the event know the login and password, and that info about this is included in the welcome preamble. If this information can be shared in advance with delegates so much the better – even if they are not tweeting many will want to access the internet and their emails.

When at the venue, if you want to be really nice, develop and maintain a list of locations of power sockets :)

Use one of the Twitter archiving tools to record all the hashtagged tweets, publish it on your website as a PDF and alert delegates to its availability.

Use the hashtag yourself in your own corporate tweets, and share useful links / retweet other useful posts.

If your conference involves a question and answer session then you can take questions from people 'watching' at home, increasing engagement and reach beyond the delegates present. A number of conferences have occurred where the audience at home was larger than the number attending, because of social media.

Think about whether or not you want conference tweets to be displayed on a screen in the foyer or behind the speakers, but maybe let the speakers know.

If your conference has industry people at booths / stalls is it worth also having a stall selling spare cables, chargers and other computer / smartphone paraphernalia?