17. PressEd - Where the Conference Is the Hashtag

Pat Lockley’s chapter describes the process of setting up a Twitter conference called #pressedconf2018. During the conference presenters would tweet out their presentation, in a series of tweets over fifteen minutes, which was followed by a Twitter conversation with participants from all around the world. There have been similar conferences, but his was the first with a focus on the use of WordPress in education. Pat shows that this type of conference has many of the benefits of physical conferences but without some of the drawbacks, like travelling to the destination or the cost of the venue/accommodation. The rest of the chapter gives some detailed quantitative data on the participants’ Twitter activity during the conference. This striking innovation has the potential to be replicated by others in HE in years to come.