MACUL 2009 Hash Tag?

[Ron Houtman]

Has anyone proposed a hashtag for MACUL 2009 yet? This would be done to help folks find and track blog posts and Twitter tweets a bit easier.

How about #MACUL09 ?

[Ben Rimes]

Sounds good. The usual "MACUL09" tag will be used for blogs and or social bookmarking, but the hash tag for twitter (I'm assuming) and other microblogging tools is a great idea.

[Shirron Jeffries]

I'm new. What is a hash tag?

[Ron Houtman]

Shirron - First off - welcome to our little community of learners!

Hash tags (aka the pound or number sign #) provide a simple way to find posts of interest, especially when large gatherings/events are occurring.

For example, I am sitting at home wondering what is going on at MACUL. Since I don't know who at MACUL is actively blogging/Twittering/etc, I have a hard time finding what I want. If people put a hash tag, like #MACUL09 somewhere in their post, I can then use a service like Twitter Search to locate all of the posts that contain that tag, which helps me locate info about the event.

Additionally, I can set up a search 'feed' and use a RSS reader to read all of the posts people are making that include the hash tag.

I hope that helps! I am a bit of an infovore, so hash tags and good search strategies help me meet that need. :)

[Ben Rimes]

In addition to Ron's message about hash tags, simply placing MACUL09 in the body text of any website that outputs RSS (all blogs, some wikis, etc.) will also allow people to pick up an what you're writing. Also including MACUL09 in the "tag" or category section of your posting will bring it up in people's RSS readers.

[Ron Houtman]

David:

I'll give you my strategy for following event-based tags, and see if that helps answer your question. Let's say I am at MACUL and I am interested in the Twitter chatter with the tag of #MACUL. I can use search.twitter.com to locate posts with 'MACUL' in them, via the website. Additionally, I can subscribe to the RSS feed of the same page to get all the Twitter mentions of MACUL in my reader.

Another option outside of just looking at Twitter traffic, is using a Google Alert to search for mentions of MACUL in the news, or a blog. Or, one can use the Technorati blog search via the web, or again, subscribe to the search feed you create with the tag MACUL.

So - overloading the RSS reader (and your brain) is possible - but as a fellow infovore, I kind of like having a pile of stuff to plow through - because you never know when someone will say something brilliant that stirs some new thinking. FWIW, when I get too many unread message in Google Reader - I have been known to hit the panic button (Mark All As Read) :)

I hope that helps!

[Asmaa Kayed]

Thanks for the clarification Ron!! I was feeling like Peggy when I read your initial post...What are twitters and hash tags.

I guess hash tags are a good ttechnique for keeping track of the latests forums. It seems like the majority of the forums are very old.

[Michael Barbour]

Actually, we'll be talking about Twitter in about two weeks time (maybe this coming week), not sure yet...

[Peggy Boggs]

Good lord, this place makes my head hurt...in a good way. Please explain a hashtag for those technologically challenged educators like moi!

[Ron Houtman]

Peggy... up about 2 posts ↑

[Peggy Boggs]

thank you, Ron!

[Jeff Trudell]

When in Twitter search ( http://search.twitter.com ), you can just search by "macul" and any tweets will show up.

Look for more information in the future about macul on twitter @ http://www.twitter.com/macul

You can see my twittering @ http://www.twitter.com/jefftrudell

[Ben Rimes]

I was actually doing some searching using Twitter Search the same way this last weekend, Jeff :) I'm going to eventually put the feed on a page of the Conference Blog, but I'm not sure if I should include a search feed for MACUL09 or MACUL. By just searching MACUL, you get lots of feedback about Cousino Macul wine from Chile :P