Hi all, I have been a quasi-lurker for @6 years. I have interacted with a few of you (thanks!). Some day I imagine I'll have something substantive to contribute; to date my attempts have been diverted into other directions. Next week, a colleague and I will conduct an action research project at a conference, "The Science of Team Science." We will invite conference participants to tweet thoughts, observations, commentary, jokes, etc during the conference, in order to build a supplementary database for the authorized task of our poster session. Any suggestions on how to set this up so that the stream remains relatively 'clean'? There is probably a technical term, but what I mean is boundaried - as much as possible - to the participants of the conference. I created the hashtag #socialSTS as a test. At the moment, it does not come up in search, not even advanced search....and it is close to 'socialist' which might be a problem(?). I am supposing that if/when the number of relevant tweets increases then the twitter search engine will find them, am I correct? Or, is the scale so small (<200 people, with who knows what percentage actually participating) that I need to set up some actual architecture? (I'll be thrilled if even a few percent contribute, since this is so experimental.) Maybe bringthesocial is a better hashtag, and closer to the name of our poster/project. I've kept my own tweets private until today (I've hardly been a user at all). I thought I ought to make them public for this project? If the idea catches on, for instance, there may be people who wished they could attend the conference but couldn't.... and who might want to participate vicariously...? (Yes, call me a dreamer, grin.) I'm sure there is a range of implications I've yet to consider. If anyone knows of similar projects, or has ideas about implementing this one, I'll be grateful for the opportunity to hash this through. (Pun intended - which is not usually my style!) thanks very much, steph -- Stephanie Jo Kent Weblog: http://www.reflexivity.us email: stephanie.kent@fulbrightmail.org mobile: 1 (413) 824-9663 Fulbright Fellow to the European Institutions, 2008-2009 Doctoral Candidate, Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst USA Master of Education, Social Justice Education Certified American Sign Language/English Interpreter