Combining Twitter with a live discussion on agricultural knowledge sharing

This week, a group of KM4Dev participants in Brussels gathered in an ‘AgHuddle’ to explore knowledge sharing approaches and experiences in agriculture. On the afternoon of the second day, the group was asked to use social media to share out and discuss their findings.

Since the group contained various Twitter users, we decided to set up a time-bound twitter chat where the group of people in the room could quickly share experiences and insights ‘live’ with colleagues elsewhere. We called this process a ‘twiddle’ – that merged the use of TWItter with the face to face huDDLE.

Time from the initial idea to action was short, so the twitter users quickly called on their followers to join a discussion in 60 minutes time, and proceeded to help 4 new twitter users sign up and get ready to twiddle.

For some 45 minutes on 7 October, the twitter users in Brussels shared the face to face AgHuddle findings with colleagues from Addis Ababa, Brussels, Cali, Rome, and Washington DC.

As the flow of messages (retweets removed) shows, it was a lively discussion that added value to the face to face discussions, helped get the main ideas documented, and provided a chance to hear views and reactions from beyond the room. It was also a lot of fun.

A side effect from the face to face element in Brussels was the way the Twitter newcomers and oldtimers shared practical Twitter tips.

More on the AgHuddle: addictomatic or socialmention; a wordle picture

The Twits: @gaurisalokhe; @peterballantyne; @charlesdhewa; @rsamii; @ednahkaramagi; @sna_km; @ekekondo; @asabajf; @stefdeprez; @simonestaiger; @Bajan_Nads; @cdn; @mongkolroek; @pbrolley; @agchat; @jschunter