Metaglossia: The Translation World

Presenting for Twitter at Conferences
October 8, 2012, 8:00 am

By Anastasia Salter
Last week, Adeline chronicled the recent “Twittergate” and considered the best practices for tweeting at conferences. I’m a huge fan of conference backchannels, particularly since my work is very interdisciplinary and it seems there’s an interesting conference every weekend that I wish I could attend. Twitter offers some insight into what happens in those spaces. How much insight? It depends–but not just on those tweeting. The presenters can play a big role in determining how accessible their work is to those looking in.

Why encourage tweeting of your work? There’s been lots of discussion of the value of academic tweeting and open exchange of ideas, which is important philosophically and part of why I tweet a conferences. But there’s also value to you as the presenter–feedback, a chance for extended conversations, and even the potential for finding collaborators, publishers, or new venues to share and grow your ideas.

As conference presenters, we won’t be the ones tweeting our talks. And there are lots of things we can’t control, like who shows up and whether they find our work interesting enough for “live” tweeting. But if you do value feedback and new insight into your work, planning for Twitter can be an important part of encouraging discussion–and as Alex Reid noted, “any possible discussion of one’s work would have the possibility of shaping one’s future work.”