A Public Archaeology Twitter Conference in April
A Twitter conference is a social media event that occurs from the comfort of your desk/sofa/bed/bus/whatever. This event is meant to bring together public archaeologists from around the world in an online setting to encourage communication and collaboration, which also happens to be free, easy to follow and allows for multi-stranded communications, without the hassle of flights, accommodation and canapés.
How do you participate in a Twitter Conference?
All you need is a Twitter account (that’s your @joebloggs name). You can sign up for one these very easily at https://www.twitter.com if you are not there already. After getting a Twitter profile, you only need to search for the hashtag #PATC1 (Public Archaeology Twitter Conference 1) to see all posts that are related to the conference. If you are interested in “spectating only”, you can follow the hashtag online, but you won’t be able to interact without a Twitter account. If you don’t have a Twitter account or don’t know how to use Twitter (or are not confident doing so), we will provide support materials and signpost ‘how-to’ guides online, so no one is excluded as far as possible.
How much time am I expected to spend on this if I participate?
After the CfP closes, everyone will be allocated a 15 minute time slot during which you are required to present your 6-12 tweet-conference paper. These slots will be allocated in relation to your local timezone, so it is vital that you provide this information accurately when requested. We do strongly encourage people to interact during the conference using the hashtag as well. It is especially vital that you will be available during your presentation time slot to present and then to answer potential questions you might receive, like at a real conference. After sign up closes we will circulate a list of abstracts and timeslots, so that you can pin point which presentations you might want to ‘see’. If you are unable to be present during your allocated time slot, you can schedule your tweets (using services such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or Buffer), so that they get posted automatically without you having to be online – although this means you won’t be able to answer any questions in real time.
What’s this public archaeology conference about?
Any paper or case study is suitable, as long as it is not offensive, and fits the broad definition of what public archaeology is outlined by Gabe Moshenska on Twitter. The aim is to make public archaeology information widely available, and to see if this conference would aid professional networking as well as public engagement.
It is on Twitter, so you don’t need to be anywhere, or travel, or even get out of bed.
There will be two key note presentations from Professor Shawn Graham from Carleton University and Dr Colleen Morgan from York University. Both are active and very well respected researchers, teachers, and authors on numerous publications related to the subject of digital archaeology.
Each ‘speaker’ will get a 15 minute slot allocated under one of 7 thematic strands, outlined below. During this time, they can tweet between 6-12 tweets using the relevant hashtag about their paper.
Speakers can include any kind of media in their tweets, from images to GIFS (as long as they are suitable for a conference where there will inevitably be a global audience of different ages. No NSFW stuff please)
The hashtags will inevitably be trolled or bot-ridden, such is life, we will do what we can as we go along. Ignore the haters. Block ‘n’ report.
Sessions will be divided into themes with a hashtag (#PATC-1 etc) and I would envisage a maximum number of 10 papers in any one session (or maybe even 10 overall depending on take up!). Sessions are:
- Public sector archaeology (politics, museums, policy etc)
- Archaeology by the public (local archaeology societies, independent scholars etc)
- Professionally-led community archaeology
- Open Archaeology (open access, use of Wikipedia etc)
- Academic public archaeology (theory etc)
- Archaeology & education (informal and formal education)
- Archaeology & media (digital media, film, TV, archaeogaming etc)
Start times and timings are dependent on the number of papers received and the timezones they come from. This will take some organisation, so I will be dealing with this after the submission deadline for all papers on the 10th February at midnight GMT and I know how many I need to configure. Until then, watch this space.
A theme manager(s) will be allocated to each theme and hashtag and will keep an eye on the tweets, timings and contributors, and hopefully keep it running smoothly. Questions and answers will be held after each paper if there is time to do so and if people are actually ‘live’ rather than scheduling tweets. More on this after the 10th February.
For more information please click "Further Official Information" below.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://archaeologicalaudiences.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/a-public-archaeology-twitter-conference-in-april/