Togs on. I’m jumping into the swirling currents of Twitter chats.
Why
There is little in terms of coordinated Twitter chats about creativity in all of it’s wonderful complexity. I have decided to establish a new, regular Twitter chat for people to coalesce and gravitate towards.
I want to help people become more creative. One of the ways I can do this is establish a chat that connects people, that inspires action, engagement and thinking about the subject. I hope the chat helps participants learn a little more about creativity.
For nearly ten years I have been using Twitter as my preferred tool for connecting with others and building a learning network. Whilst Twitter chats have their naysayers and their limitations, I still find them (and Twitter) a powerful and consistent way to organise a community, connect and learn from others interested in a topic.
When
#creativitychat will run every Saturday morning 7am-9am Melbourne time.
The inaugural chat is Saturday 29th Oct. Times below.
- Melbourne / Saturday 29th October 2016 / 7am-9am
- Auckland / Saturday 29th October 2016 / 9am-11am
- San Francisco / Friday 28th October 2016 / 1pm-3pm
- New York / Friday 28th October 2016 / 4pm-6pm
- London / Friday 28th October 2016 / 9pm-11pm
Have a look at this Worldtimebuddy link to add the event to your calendar.
I have decided to go for a longer chat because most chats I have experienced are just getting warmed up by the time their scheduled time finishes. With a couple of hours we give ourselves the best chance for meaningful dialogue.
Saturday morning in Australia, are you mad? Maybe a little, and certainly my younger self would have preferred a later time. This allows for family plans to still carry on and not to eat into a weekday evening after a long day of work either.
This is an international chat. I have always been lucky to have been connected to people on Twitter from across the world and so I wanted to go for a time that worked for the majority. Everyone will have a preference, I know, and which ever time I chose people would miss out. I think this gives us the chance to be able to share hemispherically diverse understandings of creativity.
What
Content
- Weekly topics related to creativity.
- Crowd-sourced set of questions and provocations, moderated (by me) into a short list.
- Please send me a direct message on Twitter with your question or provocation suggestions.
#creativitychat / 0001 / Nailing jelly to a tree? Seeking a common understanding of creativity.
My background is in primary education and so I have a learning focus when I think about creativity. However there is so much to learn from others. I am keen for #creativitychat to have diverse participants.
We should encourage a broad representation from different fields. The chat should be a gathering of anyone thinking about how creativity impacts on our (professional) life.
Chat Structure
- 10 minutes for introductions
- 100 minutes for reaction and dialogue about provocations and questions
- Maybe some time to share next steps, what actions are we going to take? What have we learned during the chat? “As a result of the chat I am…”
- 10 minutes for networking and sharing our own projects and blogs etc.
- Close with the next week’s topic
I have been inspired by the #agchat founder Michele Payn-Knoper who outlined some of her lessons from running a Twitter chat over the last seven years. Thanks to Simon Owens for the great guide on running a chat, which outlines Michele’s thoughts. Highly recommended if you are looking to start something too.
A call to action
- Check out your diary for the times above and consider joining me. There will only be one shot at being part of the first!
- Share a tweet using the hashtag #creativitychat to encourage others to get involved.
- Join and participate in the chat.
- Direct message me on Twitter with your questions or provocations related to the chat topic (0001 = defining creativity)
- Leave a comment inline or otherwise with any ideas or suggestions related to the questions I still have. I need your help.
More to consider
- What is the most efficient way to archive the chat? Should we archive it? How much do people really use a chat archive?
- I like the way readers can comment, highlight, and engage with content on Medium. Perhaps a summary post with questions / provocations and a curated set of tweets to continue the conversation.
- How could we incorporate a slow chat element during the week, to allow others to participate?
- What new ideas are we bringing to the Twitter chat arena? How are we helping to advance this way of learning and connecting? How might we connect Twitter with other tools to extend what we can do and mitigate against some of the known weaknesses?
- Need to probably use the @creativitychat handle eventually. I have contacted the current account owners.
- Find a merry band of buddies who can help moderate and facilitate.
- Do we need some web property to gather resources, guidelines and ideas about the chat?
- Develop some chat protocols and rules of engagement.