I had the most endearing experience this past week, a homecoming of sorts.
No, it didn’t involve football, or any other socially-close behavior. No travel either, other than maybe a bit of time travel which I don’t believe is covered by our current state of semi-lockdown.
It was a tweet chat.
For those whose knowledge of Twitter is limited to its use as a global ranting platform, let me introduce you its use as a tool of social discourse for the purpose of sharing information, help, and long-distance collegiality.
I first met the tweet chat early in 2011 when someone introduced me to a new way to hang out with people I’d met during my tenure as a member of SHRM’s special expertise panel on human capital measurement and HR metrics. It was simple, I was informed, and I would be the ‘special guest’. How could I say no? I’d been on Twitter since May 13, 2008 and so far it was not a promising venture, though I did enjoy the challenge of expressing a thought in under 140 characters. I was, for better or worse, @DrJanice to a growing number of followers. I later wrote two books with that handle in the title. (See Amazon.com/author/drjanice for those and more.)
The chat, then hash tagged #TChat, was amazing. It led to many meetings after, both in person and by video. And I was a regular at the weekly chats till family challenges took precedence.
#TChat became #WorkTrends. I’m not sure when that happened, but when I got the request, I knew I had to return.
Here is the podcast and summary. I hope you enjoy it.
Social media, I’ve concluded can be used for good or not. At its best, it brings us home again.
