Twitter Conversations

I was in my first twitter sustained conversation this week. The hashtag keeping it altogether was #nzaot10. I think it was a international conference of OTs (Occupational Therapists.)

I was following it out of curiosity when the conversation turned to some mental health related topics, that I'm quite interested in.

So I contributed my ideas from my position as an mental health promotion expert.

It was an interesting professional conversation because I don't often get to dialogue to academic inclined OTs.

Some of my Tweets were retweeted by key participants and that encouraged me to participate more. Further, a few questions were directed at me.

In the next few days, my Twitter account 'lewismal' picked up a handful of new Twitter followers who are OTs in different parts of the world.

I'm not sure what that will mean for them or me. I do sense the value from this Twitter interaction of having conversations with people who think differently about topics I work on from my peers.

I look forward to what comes my was from them by way of ideas, news or questions that disrupt my professional assumptions.

I wonder what would happen in my home town of Toowoomba ( to our already strong community networks and to our fairly weak local media if local tweeters started using a #Twba hashtag.

Does anyone have any predictions?
Does anyone know of a town/small city that has adopted a hashtag based on its name? What happens to community spirit?

I should Twitter out those questions.