Rules & guidelines
- Organisers will allocate accepted proposals into a programme, and give each presentation a 15-minute time slot.
- Each presentation consists of no more than 6 tweets. Each tweet should have the official hashtag #brainTC, and be numbered (see example presentation below).
- Tweets can contain pictures and even links to sources or papers, but the presentation should be understandable by reading just the tweets.
- The audience can comment and ask questions from the presenter using the official hashtag. The main discussion should happen before the next presentation begins. However, discussions may continue even after the conference.
- After the conference, abstracts and presentations (the six numbered tweets) will be collected into a proceedings.
Example presentation
The general guideline for the six-tweet presentation is to have an introductory tweet, then four substance tweets and finally a concluding tweet. Each presentation will begin be introduced by an announcement tweet from the organizers @abc_aalto. Despite the strict character limits, please aim for clear and good scientific-quality presentations.
The example presentation shows some ways of presenting information in tweets; it is not an example of the recommended type of content.
First, the announcement tweet from @abc_aalto:
The #brainTC demo presentation: “The electroencephalography page on Wikipedia.” by
A. Author @neuroalice & B. Coauthor @bobthecoauthor— Aalto Brain Centre (@abc_aalto) March 16, 2017
Then, the presentation. Each tweet should be a response to the announcement tweet to form a thread:
(1) Brain uses electrical pulses for fast signaling. (Intro tweet of the example presentation – with information from Wikipedia) #brainTC pic.twitter.com/aXQbm2dfFB
— Alice Author (@neuroalice) March 16, 2017
(2) Electric currents from neurons penetrate the tissues, reaching the scalp and causing differences in electric potential. #brainTC
— Alice Author (@neuroalice) March 16, 2017
(3) Electroencephalogram (EEG) = electric potential measured on the scalp. First human EEG measured by Hans Berger 1924. #brainTC pic.twitter.com/ZI2QyRMPV0
— Alice Author (@neuroalice) March 16, 2017
(4) EEG may use an array of electrodes around the head. Electrode locations add spatial information for localizing activity. #brainTC pic.twitter.com/zsu1bvTGXR
— Alice Author (@neuroalice) March 16, 2017
(5) Magnetoencephalography (MEG) measures magnetic fields. Added to EEG, yields spatial precision. Still more expensive than EEG. #brainTC pic.twitter.com/XmnqDKkbwY
— Alice Author (@neuroalice) March 16, 2017
Finally, a concluding tweet:
(6) EEG is for measuring fast electrical brain activity. MEG adds spatial precision. (see https://t.co/AQkyx76soa for image credit) #brainTC
— Alice Author (@neuroalice) March 16, 2017
Tips
- Use TweetDeck etc. so that you can follow multiple streams simultaneously. As a presenter, you might want to make a column for notifications and another for the conference hashtag.
- You should draft the six tweets of your presentation beforehand, so they are ready to be sent when your slot opens (and be able to check that they meet the Twitter character limit, images have uploaded etc.)
- You can pace your six tweets of your presentation to be slightly apart, to give people time to read and understand them, rather than sending them all at once in the beginning of your time slot.
- The presenter “chairs” the discussion during their time slot, by choosing which comments and questions they answer.
- Just like at regular conferences, be prepared for asking and answering questions. If your presentation is about a study that has been published elsewhere, it is a good idea to include a link to the publication in the presentation (a link in a tweet takes up only 23 characters).
What if I don’t have a Twitter account?
Don’t worry, it’s easy to make one and get started with Twitter. Here are some links with useful tips.