History, Baseball, and the Massachusetts Historical Society

Sometimes dreams come true.

If you have followed this blog for awhile, or connected with me on Twitter or Facebook, you know I am a diehard baseball fan. I root for the Boston Red Sox, a team I have followed since the 1986 season.

In 2011, my fondness for the sport, and the Sox, reached a new level of passion: After nearly 10 years of waiting, Tim and I became season ticket holders.

As season ticket holders, we earn points for each game we attend in person. We use those points to bid on experiences, like spending an inning inside the Green Monster (it was awesome!) or the opportunity to spend a day with one of the Red Sox's World Series trophies.

On October 24, 2015 between 10am and 1pm, Tim and I will be spending our day with the 2004 World Series trophy at the Massachusetts Historical Society. We would love for you to join us.

We hope that by bringing the trophy to the MHS, we will encourage friends, family, and strangers to visit this wonderful organization and to take some time to explore its fantastic history exhibits, which on October 24 will include a special pop-up display of early baseball items from the MHS's collections.

Please come and enjoy a wonderful day of history and baseball.

Also, please help spread the word about this event.

How To Tweet A Conference Panel

If you have attended a conference during the past two or three years you have likely witnessed the following scene: three to four panelists at the front of the room reading their papers one-by-one, while several people in the audience alternate between watching the presenters and looking down at their smartphones or tablets while frantically texting. This is the scene of many #Twitterstorians at work live-tweeting a conference.

In this post, you will find tips and tricks for how you can live-tweet a conference panel as well as why I think conference tweeting has become a necessary part of the profession.

Why Tweet a Conference Panel

Tweeting conference panels has become a mainstream activity at professional conferences.

Conference tweets help spread new ideas, start conversations about those new ideas, and allow colleagues who couldn’t attend to stay up-to-date with the latest professional information.

Conference tweets also serve as a powerful public relations tool. Anyone interested in a particular profession can gain insight into the inner-workings of that profession by following tweets from a professional organization’s annual conference.

In the case of History, not only does tweeting information from a conference help fellow historians gain insight into what areas colleagues are exploring, but it helps non-historians gain insight into the work historians do.

Conference Tweet Etiquette

Caution: Tweeting conference panels is important work that should not be undertaken lightly. Live-tweeting a conference requires a high-level of mental focus. To tweet well you must really pay attention to the presenters and the ideas they convey. 

Conference Tweet Etiquette

There are several stated and unstated rules you should follow if you want to be a successful and professional conference tweeter.

1. Know Your Venue: Tweeting from conferences has become an accepted professional practice. However, it would be unprofessional to tweet from a seminar that has a reputation as a workshop for fresh ideas.

2. Use the Hashtag: Nearly every conference has an official hashtag that you should use when you tweet. The hashtag serves several purposes:

1. It tells your followers that you are at a conference.

2. The hashtag allows anyone interested in the conference to follow tweets in context and in sequence.

3. Hashtags make it easier for conference organizers to aggregate tweets.

4. It is a powerful networking tool that will connect you with other conference-goers.

3. Give Credit: Always attribute the ideas of a presenter to that presenter. All tweets containing another’s idea should contain their name. Proper etiquette requires that you first tweet their full name, affiliation, and paper title (sometimes this requires more than one tweet) and then use either their last name or twitter handle (preferred if they have one) at the start of each subsequent tweet.

4. Number Your Tweets: If you need more than 140 characters to tweet a presenter’s idea, number your tweets. The number should be at the end of the tweet and in parentheses: (1), (2), (3). You should number your tweets as a sequence if you know how many tweets you need to convey an idea: (1/3), (2/3), (3/3). Numbering your tweets helps followers know that your tweets are part of a sequence.

5. Issue Corrections: Tweeting a conference panel is fast-paced work. No one performs it flawlessly. If you discover that you mis-tweeted a panelist’s ideas, delete your original tweet and issue a corrected tweet.

You should consider letting panelists know that you are willing to issue corrections. You can tell them in person or tweet at the end of a panel, or the conference, that you will gladly correct a mistake if someone finds one.

6. Identify Yourself If Requested: Some conference organizers request that you introduce yourself as a #Twitterstorian or tweeting attendee to the panelists before a panel starts. In my experience, this happens only at academic conferences and more of these conferences are rendering this introduction unnecessary by issuing badges that say “I Tweet” to those who tweet.

7. Do Your Best: Conference tweets represent presenters' ideas and convey an image of you as a professional historian to colleagues and the outside world. Do your best to convey ideas, the profession, and you accurately.

How To Tweet A Panel

There are two ways to tweet a conference panel: live or after the fact.

Those who live-tweet use their smartphones, tablets or laptops to type tweets as panelists speak. Some conference attendees prefer to tweet after they have paid attention to the entire panel and digested its ideas. In both cases, you should introduce and attribute your tweets to the person and paper where they came from.

How to Live Tweet A Conference Panel

Many Twitterstorians live-tweet from their smartphones or tablet devices. I prefer to tweet from my laptop because I can take all the notes I want and then cut and paste what I want to tweet with ease.

I also prefer to live-tweet from my laptop because I type much faster on a full-sized keyboard. Capturing notes on my laptop allows me to focus more on ideas instead of on whether my thumbs hit the right key on a touchscreen device. Additionally, typing notes enables me to capture the context of an idea and better judge if and how it should be tweeted.

My Live-Tweet Workflow

Equipment/Tech: Laptop, smartphone, power cords, Evernote (my favorite note-taking app) and Tweetbot (my favorite Twitter app).

Step 1: Sit by a power outlet. Whenever possible, I show up to a panel early and sit near an outlet. This allows me to charge and save my laptop and smartphone batteries for rooms where I cannot sit by an outlet.

Step 2: Connect to the internet. History conferences have a spotty record when it comes to providing free WiFi. Many #Twitterstorians tweet from their smartphones because they are portable and already connected to the internet. I prefer to work on my laptop.

Before the panel begins, I either connect to the free WiFi or create a private WiFi hotspot for my laptop with my smartphone.

Step 3: Make note of speakers, paper titles, and twitter handles. I try to do this the night or morning before, but if this doesn’t work, I pull out my conference program, flip to the appropriate page, and place the open page on the floor in front of me or on the chair next to me (if available).

Although, conference programs tell you the names and proper spellings of the speakers and their paper titles, I have yet to see one include the presenters' Twitter handles. I perform a quick search to see if I can locate one. Often I attribute tweets using the presenter's last name.

Step 4: Use shortcuts/hotkeys. Hotkeys or shortcuts won’t help you on a smartphone or tablet, but they can simplify your live-tweet workflow on a laptop.

If you are logged into Twitter you can launch a new tweet box by pressing [N].

I set [option + /] as my hotkeys for Tweetbot. I prefer to use Tweetbot because I can launch a new tweet box while I take notes in Evernote.

Other shortcuts/hotkeys you might find helpful are those for cut and paste. On a Mac the keyboard shortcut for cut is [command+ c]. Use [command+ v] for paste.

Step 5: Tweet.

Conclusion

I started tweeting conference panels to help colleagues who could not attend the conference. However, the more I have tweeted and interacted with non-conference attendees, the more I have realized that conference tweets don’t just help fellow historians catch a glimpse of the ideas being discussed, they help anyone interested in history gain insight into the inner-workings of the historical profession. This is an aspect of conference tweeting that the profession should welcome. The more people who understand what we do and why our work is important, the easier time history departments and organizations will have finding funding and students.

Share Your Tips!

Do you live-tweet conference panels? Do you have helpful tips to share?

Feedly Shared Collections: A New Way to Curate High-Quality History Content

Feedly made a big announcement: Pro users can create shared collections of content that they can make private or public. This has HUGE implications for historians and history organizations.

This tool can help us bring history back to the forefront of the public mind!

What is Feedly

Feedly is the most popular RSS reader app. The app allows you to find, subscribe to, view, organize, and share blog content, news articles, YouTube videos, and podcasts. Feedly displays the headlines and body content for all of the internet content you subscribe to within categorized lists.

Millions of people use Feedly and millions of people love history.

Using Feedly's Shared Collections

Professional Use

If the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, or the National Council on Public History curated a feed of history news its members should be aware of, would you check in with it?

I would.

If these organizations curated a feed of important professional information, it would save me time and keep me better informed because I wouldn't have to hunt for it in all of the major publications. A Feedly shared collection means that we could all visit one place and see all of the most relevant and important articles about the historical profession.

Public Use

Imagine if trusted and well-established organizations like the Omohundro Institute of American History and Culture or the McNeil Center for Early American Studies curated shared collections of early American history blogs, YouTube channels, or podcasts that anyone could access.[1] They would be providing an invaluable service because history lovers and professional historians alike could easily check these shared collections and trust that the content within them was worth consuming.[2]

There is so much blog, podcast, and internet video content on the web it is difficult to sort through it and find something worth consuming. Most people give up before they find the gems hidden within the morass.

Historians, history departments, and historical organizations could help their colleagues and history lovers bypass the quagmire by guiding them to reliable, high-quality history content.

Feedly's shared collections are a powerful tool that we can use to communicate history. Shared collections reduce barriers between content curators and readers because Feedly presents readers with access to not just a list of blogs, but the articles and headlines from those blogs. It is a tool that if used properly could help us in our quest to restore history to the forefront of the public mind.[3]

Here are links to my Feedly shared collections and instructions for how you can set-up your own shared collections. I will be adding more feeds soon.

[1] The OIEAHC already has a feature like this with its Octo, but this new Feedly feature could put the content from all of the blogs it features in one, easily accessible place.

[2] History departments could also curate shared collections for students and alumni.

[3] As of now Feedly only allows you to curate blog feeds in its shared collections feature. I hope that as Feedly updates this feature they will add the ability to easily curate shared collections of individual articles.

Archive Pay Dirt: Americans in Albany

Eureka! I found it! I am in New York City this week conducting research at the New York Public Library. I also have a ticket to see Hamilton the Musical.

My research goal for the trip: find information about the role the people of Albany played during Sullivan's Campaign of 1779 and the Native American and Loyalist raids between 1780-1782.

If you read my dissertation, you would be surprised to learn that the War for Independence in Albany ended with the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. (Don't always believe what you read.)

Yesterday, I went through the Henry Glen Papers. Henry Glen lived in Schenectady and served as a Deputy Quarter Master General throughout the war. As I went through this small collection and read over supply requests, orders, and personal correspondence, I stumbled upon a letter to Glen from Jeremiah Lansingh of Albany.

Dated 6 July 1778, the letter conveys intelligence from the Battle of Monmouth.  Some of the intelligence is wrong, but Lansingh discusses how "our troops" caused the enemy to retreat. Moreover, he ended his letter with the following sentence:

"I don't doubt but our Troops will keep up the old Maxim (Work well begun is half ended) And may they make an End of them All [British soldiers], is the sincere Wish & one who glories in the Name of an American and is your humble Servt.

Jerh Lansingh"

For more than 10 years I have searched for a statement by someone from Albany that explicitly stated they viewed themselves as an American. I never thought I would find one, but I held hope. Unlike my dissertation, my book won't have to deal in abstractions. I made a convincing case before, but now I have a real statement.

Twitter Strategies for Historians

Do you have a Twitter strategy?

In this post, you will discover easy tactics you can use to increase awareness about history and your research and build your historian’s platform with Twitter.

Twitter Strategies

The are three strategies when it comes to Twitter: Conversation, Content Curation, and Spam Marketing.

I employ conversation and content curation as part of my Twitter strategy.

Conversation

The conversation strategy involves tweeting when you want to have a conversation.

Users who follow this strategy log onto Twitter when they have time. They scan their timeline (the feed of everyone you follow), curated lists (lists you create with like users; I created a list of “historians”), or favorite hashtags (conversation topics) to see what conversations people are having and whether they want to contribute their thoughts. Sometimes conversational users start a conversation by tweeting a message or question.

Participating in conversations makes Twitter fun. However, conversations represent only half the power of Twitter.

Content Curation

Do you like discovering interesting blog posts, news stories, or information about new exhibits, events, or places to visit or eat?

Many Twitter users do, which is why becoming a content curator can help you build a following on Twitter.

A content curator finds interesting information to share and shares it.

I am a content curator.

Every morning I log into Feedly, an app that allows you to find, subscribe to, view, organize, and share blog content, news articles, and YouTube videos. The app displays the headlines for all of the internet content I subscribe to within categorized lists. As I eat breakfast, I scan article headlines. When I find an interesting title, I click on it so Feedly opens the full article in a new internet browser tab. I skim the full article and decide if I want to read and/or share it. If I want to share it, I create and schedule a tweet for the article (more on scheduling tweets below).

Spam Marketing

I do not recommend this strategy, but it exists. Some Twitter users create accounts for the sole purpose of tweeting ads for their product or service.

How to Tweet When You Aren’t On Twitter

If you follow me on Twitter (@lizcovart), you have likely noticed that I tweet a lot and if you really pay attention to my feed you know that I tweet the same articles 2, and sometimes 3, times per day.

In fact, I tweet at least once per hour; I tweet 2 or 3 times per hour when my followers are most active.

With all of this tweeting you may be surprised to learn that most days I check Twitter 2 or 3 times per day for a total of 10-15 minutes.

Would you like to know the secret of how you can use Twitter all the time and yet only spend 10-15 minutes actively using the platform?

My secret: I use a scheduling service to schedule my tweets.

There are many services you can use either for free or for a monthly or annual fee. They include Buffer, Edgar, SproutSocial, HootSuite, and Social Oomph. I have used two of these services.

Buffer

Buffer allows you to schedule up to 10 tweets for free at times you choose. You must join Buffer's "Awesome Plan" to schedule more than 10 tweets. The Awesome plan costs $102 per year, or $10 per month, and it allows you to schedule an unlimited number of tweets.

At first, 10 tweets per day proved enough. As I followed more blogs and befriended more bloggers, 10 tweets became inadequate. I upgraded to the unlimited tweet plan within 4 months.

Buffer's Awesome plan enabled me to schedule tweets on a 24-hour schedule, which allowed me to reach new audiences. It also permitted me to schedule tweets multiple times per day.

I used Buffer for 18 months and the service worked great until I started podcasting and needed a more robust service to share my episodes evenly.

Edgar

I love Edgar. Edgar uses a calendar and category queues to share your content evenly. Unlike Buffer, Edgar stores all of the content you put into your queues for continued use.

When you sign-up for Edgar, the platform invites you to create content queues or categories. Categories represent the topics of the content you like to share.

After you create your category queues, you fill them with content. I used a feature called “bulk upload” to upload blog and podcast tweets from a spreadsheet into the appropriate categories; I add content to my “history” queue every morning.

Before you can put Edgar to work, you have to create a content calendar. A content calendar is a schedule of when you want content from each queue to tweet.

With calendar and content in place, Edgar will tweet what you want, when you want.

What I love about Edgar is that once the software tweets a preloaded tweet, it moves that tweet to the bottom of the queue. Edgar will tweet your content again once it shares all of your other preloaded tweets.

Edgar saves me time and ensures that all my podcast episodes share evenly. Additionally, Edgar has made it easy for me to share and call attention to old blog content, much of which is "evergreen" or information that is always good.

Final Thoughts

I love Twitter and have found it to be a powerful tool to practice digital public history. Admittedly, not everyone needs a $49 per month scheduling service to build their historian’s platform with Twitter. I use the service to promote my podcast and history. I am also willing to make this investment because Twitter is a large component of how I work as digital public historian.

Although I use a scheduling service, I do not abuse it like many internet marketers do. I limit my scheduled tweets to 1-3 time per hour, I tweet two articles that other people wrote before I tweet a Ben Franklin’s World episode or a blog post I wrote. I also pause my scheduling service when I go on vacation or live-tweet conferences.

More on how to tweet a conference in my next post.