Tip: Networking & Connections
The past couple weeks have shown how tenuous & vulnerable our online networking spaces might be…
I confess: I am mourning a bit about what’s happening over at Twitter. I sincerely love(d) Twitter for finding academic tweeps with similar interests. But it seems to be going downhill fast, and in the interest of maintaning these important networking and community opportunities, I’ve spent some time over the past week actively curating a few other spaces just in case, although I won’t be deleting my Twitter account anytime soon.
Mastodon
I’m tentatively excited about the potential of Mastodon, but it’s only as good as the people who join. The trickiest bit for a newcomer is trying to figure out what the servers mean. As far as I can tell, it’s not that important which server you join, because you can still follow people and hashtags across servers.
So, I’m on the mstdn.social server with the username breana - my Mastodon handle is therefore @breana@mstdn.social and the web address for my profile is https://mstdn.social/@breana
If you’re interested in exploring, I found these resources helpful:
List of academic “instances” and groups on Mastodon https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon
Here’s a long explanation of what Mastodon is and how to get started: https://2ality.com/2022/10/mastodon-getting-started.html
And, hot off the presses this morning: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-get-started-use-mastodon/
I know others are thinking about using LinkedIn to be a space of connection and sharing, so I’m interested in seeing how that space might become more active, too. (Find me here!)
What am I missing? Please share other online networking & collaboration spaces in the comments!
Speaking of networking and collaboration, this week I’m in Seattle for the annual POD conference - the somewhat oddly named professional organization for faculty/educational development. I’m so excited to learn about what colleagues across the country are doing to support faculty at their institutions - if you’re here, I would love to meet up!