When presenting your twitter thread, you MUST include the conference hashtag, #AnimBehav2023, which will ensure that attendees can find, view, and engage with your twitter presentation. Your presentation will also be retweeted by host societies, the Animal Behavior Society (@AnimBehSociety) and the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (@asab_tweets). Anyone can attend this public-format conference via twitter, and we expect presenters to be ready to respond to tweeted attendee questions and comments both during their assigned time slot and to respond to questions that are posted later on during the conference. We hope that the Twitter platform will foster meaningful dialogue among animal behavior scientists across the globe. While the Twitter Conference lasts for just two days, one benefit of this format is that your presentation will remain accessible for viewers indefinitely -- this dialogue can continue! But of course, be aware of this when thinking about including sensitive or time-dependent information in your presentation.

 

Preparing tweets

 

The key to a successful presentation is to prepare the tweets in the thread ahead of time, rather than composing tweets live during your time slot. You MUST tweet the 5-6 tweets of your presentation in a thread so that it is clear for your audience to follow (if you don’t know how to make a thread, follow these instructions and the visual step-by-step instructions provided). And again, don’t forget to include the conference hashtag, #AnimBehav2023, in each of the tweets.

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Once your abstract has been accepted we will also provide you with another conference hashtag to include in your tweets. These will be specific to your research topic in order to connect you with researchers that are interested in your findings.

 

We strongly recommend that you compose and save the tweets in a word document before the conference. There are a couple of different approaches to sending the tweets during your allocated time. Please refer to our visual step-by-step guidelines for creating threads from your smartphone or web browser or click on the links to instructions provided by Twitter.

 

1. If you are tweeting from your web browser on your computer:

   1. ~30 minutes before your allocated time, build your thread by copying your prepared tweets from your word document into Twitter and adding any media (with ALT text) that you want to include for each tweet.

   2. Leave this window open until your allocated time

   3. When it is your scheduled presenter time, click “Tweet All” to submit your presentation thread.

2. If you are tweeting from your phone you may choose one of two options:

   1. ~30 minutes before your allocated time, build your thread:

      1. Copy your prepared tweets from your word document into the Twitter app and adding any media (with ALT text) that you want to include for each tweet.

      2. Leave the app open until your allocated time

      3. When it is your scheduled presenter time, click “Tweet All” to submit your presentation thread.

   2. Prepare your thread ahead of time and save as a draft:

      1. Anytime in the days before your allocated time, build your thread by copying your prepared tweets from your word document into Twitter and adding any media (with ALT text) that you want to include for each tweet.

   3. Save this thread as a draft by clicking “Cancel” and then click “save draft.”

   4. At least 10 minutes before your allocated time, bring up the saved thread by clicking on the “feather tweet” icon then selecting “drafts” and wait until your allocated time.

   5. At your allocated time click “Tweet All!” *Note that you may want to check earlier before your allocated time that your drafted thread will open.

 

Make your tweets accessible

Using images and videos to support your tweets are a great way to present your research. Please make sure that these are available to individuals that rely on screen readers. For images, add ALT text, and provide a short description of the image, and for videos make sure to include captions.

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Responding to Questions

 

You should also plan to be available for answering questions and discussion points that come up, particularly during the allocated 10-minutes.

 

The audience will be Tweeting questions to the last tweet of your thread. To view questions, look at the last tweet of your thread. You will see a number next to the “chat bubble” icon. This is the number of audience responses to your twitter thread!

 

To view the questions, click on the general area of the last tweet and the questions will appear below. If you want to view a specific question click, on the general area of that question (use the arrows in the upper left corner to navigate back).

 

To reply to a question, click the “chat bubble icon” associated with the specific question’s tweet! Type your response and click “reply”

 

Please review our step-by-step visual instructions on how to view and respond to questions on the conference website.

 

After the presentation, presenters are encouraged to keep answering post-session or post-conference questions. Twitter will notify presenters that somebody replied to their presentation thread. A full schedule of sessions and presentations is available by the end of 2020 on the conference website: here.  

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For some basic introductory information about how twitter works, check out this Twitter Masterclass series from the British Ornithologists’ Union, or explore their many excellent blog posts about the role of social media in science today.