For a week in late March, I guest-hosted the rocur (rotation curation) account @iamscicomm.  My initial motivation for hosting the account was to disseminate recent research on science communication and graduate training. Hosting this account would allow me to have a greater reach than the reach of my and my colleagues twitter followers. My hope was that by engaging with a community that’s already excited about #scicomm, I could move past sharing our work into engaging in a dialogue.  I’m so pleased that our work was discussed with such excitement and that it was shared over 75 times during the week.

Amanda Freise started the week by introducing me to @iamscicomm followers.

During the week I composed over 400 original tweets (not including retweets).  At least 90% of these were composed at night and scheduled in hootsuite, since I had a full week of work including a big deadline.  I might have overdone it with the tweeting but I knew it was a special opportunity to host this account and wanted to make the most of it.  The biggest lesson I learned is that leaving 30 minutes of deadspace after a great question is not enough. I had tons of discussion going on with folks about how they were trained for science communication during university, and as I was engaging with these organic tweets, my robotic hootsuite version of my self kept pushing the conversation along.  On the other hand, one tactic that worked well was to time questions with breaks in the day where I actually could engage more (at lunch or after work).

Read on for a select few tweets from the week, starting with a robotic hello!

As I planned for the week-long guest presence on @iamscicomm, I dreamed up a number of other #scicomm topics that I was excited to share about. Each day I reminded @iamscicomm followers what was on the docket.

 

On Monday I focused my tweetstorm on our work on #scicomm and graduate training.  This topic generated a lot of conversation about what more can be done to improve the attention #scicomm gets in graduate training.

It was awesome hearing from people from far and wide, and from people from super close (my own institution)!

On Tuesday, I shared about our research team formed at #EcoDAS, a conference for early-career aquatic scientists in Hawaii.  We talked not only about our team but about different models for conferences that can make better use of face-to-face time and airfares.

I also shared about our strategies for working together. Afterall, we met in person for about a week and then worked on our research together remotely for 2 years before publishing.

On Wednesday, we talked about #SciComm and education.  The ensuing discussions were fantastic for me, as someone who is a passionate educator and who is always looking to share ideas on helping students improve their ability to communicate science and to navigate information and misinformation.

On Thursday, I shared about my own research and science communication experiences.  People were really excited about diatoms and lake sediment cores. I wasn’t too surprised since I got hooked on paleolimnology for the same reasons 10 years ago!

I wrapped up the week by sharing others tips for productive writing.