Next Level: tackling twitter chats

I was scared. I admit it.
I was skeptical. I was even a bit derisive ("Where do these people get the time? They must all be single...")

The idea of keeping up with a Twitter chat was daunting. The technology was not the issue (I had seen the suggestions of using TweetDeck or HootSuite). It was the time. Setting aside an hour to answer a set of questions is hard for me.

Sunday night, I was able to pull it off for my first FULL twitter chat: #caedchat 8-9pm, Pacific time. My wife was busy putting together PTA gifts for Teacher Appreciation Week, so I dove in. And you know what? It wasn't that hard. And I really enjoyed it. And I was pushed. And I learned from others. Everything was perfect.

Fresh from that victory, I decided to give #connectedtl a chance (they're mostly edtech coaches and TOSAs). I joined their Voxer group as a result of CUE Admin Rockstar camp (another post on that another day), and I thought I might try it. It's on Tuesday night at 7pm. BIG PROBLEM: I have a weekly mens group that meets at that exact time, and I meet my mentor for dinner prior to that meeting every week.

So I wasn't sitting at my laptop. I downloaded Hootsuite onto my phone. I knew it wasn't ideal, but I had received the questions for the chat and thought I could schedule my tweets to publish at about the time I thought the questions would launch. NOPE. The interface was wonky, and I couldn't figure it out. So no scheduled tweets! Oh well, I think...I'll just pop them all out at once, and the others will just have to deal with it. But my codependency kicked in, and I determined that I was potentially ruining the chat for someone expecting the questions to come through live.

Forgot to mention: my meeting has a car break-in problem, so we appoint one guy to go out and watch the parking lot for twenty minutes at a time. I volunteered so I could sit in my car and spit out my tweets before heading in to the meeting. In any event, I finally finished the chat at 10:20 (long after all the others had left). But there's a Voxer channel with follow up for the next two days, so I'll be sure to follow up there!

All in all, I encourage chat participation when you can. It's really not difficult, technically. It's the time commitment. One or two a week (and really, a few a month) will probably do the trick for me!

Do you participate in any chats? Leave the hashtag and the time in the comments!