I’m just wrapping up my first “Twitter takeover” (or curation) and I thought I would take a minute to reflect on the experience. For the past two weeks I’ve been in charge of the @femedtech Twitter feed. I have been following FemEdTech for quite a while and appreciate the network, and no networks do not grow if they are a house of cards…so…I decided to volunteer.
After participating in #PressEdConf19 and into curating @femedtech, I quickly realized how out of practice I was! For years I managed several Twitter feeds in my role(s) with the MAET program. I had a great workflow down which included TweetDeck and IFTTT and felt I did a pretty good job maintaining and feeding the network. After leaving that role, I completely disconnected all of the “pipes” I had built and sort of went into consumer (and occasional producer or re-tweeter) mode on Twitter. Curating @femedtech forced me to be much more attentive and strategic. I fired up TweetDeck for the first time in quite a while and found myself much more aware of followers, who I was retweeting and what I was tweeting. This really aligned well with the #femedtechvalues activity which is currently running. When signing up to curate, I knew that I wasn’t going to haphazardly post things – but – the FemEdTech values were always on my mind, and, in visiting (and revisiting) them daily, I began to think of ways the values/network could be improved.
One thing that struck me as an area of opportunity for growth was the @femedtech Twitter avatar. I took up the values challenge and posted this tweet:
I will take up the #femedtechvalues challenge – and would love to have some discussion with the #femedtech network. As I’ve been curating this week – I keep looking at the Twitter avatar/profile photo & I’m wondering if it is representative of our Values? https://t.co/ViIzc2YT8T
— Dr. Leigh Graves Wolf (@gravesle) April 30, 2019
Some really fruitful and thoughtful discussion ensued, and, I felt empowered to change the avatar. It was really interesting to me how I negotiated this decision. I posted as myself, retweeted from @femedtech – and then, with encouragement from members of the network, made the change.
I found myself questioning myself a lot more than I thought I would over the past two weeks – am I posting enough, too much? I tried to tamper down those voices in my head as much as possible. The network has established very open and caring practices and expectations (thank you Helen & Frances – and of course all of the others who have contributed over time). I learned a lot from the experience and wish Martina the best of luck as she takes over starting on Monday!
There are many ways to get involved in the FemEdTech open space. You can learn more by visiting: http://femedtech.net/about-femedtech/get-involved/