Re: [london-hack-space] @londonhackspace twitter.. using it and what we want it for?

[Russ Garrett]

Can we defer this discussion until Monday when Jonty and I are back in range of a proper keyboard?

On 21 Jun 2011 14:30, "Sam Cook" <sam.lind...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey,
>
> There's recently been a reasonable amount of discussion on IRC about what we
> use the @londonhackspace account for. Some people have said announces only,
> others that it should reply to direct questions and some feel that it should
> be more of a "persona" and try to initiate conversations.
>
> In response to this I thought I'd start a thread just so see what people
> thought it should be used for. Once (some) sort of a consensus gets reached
> we can go from there but it seems to be causing (very minor) amount of
> annoyance and I think that comes from people not know what the guidelines
> for the account are.
>
> Personally I think it should reply to direct messages; some of these will no
> doubt be stock ("@londonhackspace when should I come down", "what equipment
> do you have" etc) it also seems to get at least some requests from
> journalists and such looking for interviews and information, again I don't
> know how we could go ahead dealing with this (at the moment I've just been
> forwarding the message to IRC) but I think it could do well as more than
> just the events calendar in stream form.
>
> To avoid multiple people having access to the account I know Jonty has been
> looking at re-implementing DM-bot for it.
>
> On a side note I was wondering if a little more could be added to the bio I
> was thinking changing
>
>> A London home for hackers, tinkerers, fiddlers, and geeks to socialise,
>> make, learn, and teach.
>>
> to this:
>
>> A London home for hackers, tinkerers, and geeks to meet, make, learn, and
>> teach. NB: this account isn't always on; for fast replies try IRC
>> #london-hack-space.
>>
> maybe the redirect to IRC is unnecessary but it might be worth adding some
> indication of what sort of response people can expect.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> S

[Martin Dittus]

Oooh, takeover opportunity!

I think we should sell the ability to tweet from our account to the highest bidders.

m.

[Sam Cook]

[tom]

we should definitely announce things more often, the nottinghack one
is a good example. They tweet all kinds of stuff to theirs.
It makes the place seem more used and busier and might generally be
interesting for people that cant make it here

Perhaps we can tweet projects that were working on or similar?

[Charles Yarnold]

On 21 June 2011 17:25, tom <bollo...@gmail.com> wrote:

we should definitely announce things more often, the nottinghack one
is a good example. They tweet all kinds of stuff to theirs.
It makes the place seem more used and busier and might generally be
interesting for people that cant make it here

Perhaps we can tweet projects that were working on or similar?

I would say that the knottinghack account tweets far too much, to the point where I don't read much of it.

I do like the high signal to noise ratio of our account, new events, reminders, milestones. When you start adding in extra stuff to that stream it takes on a personalty....

[Martin Dittus]

As with everything else I would like to leave such decisions up to whoever ends up running the account.

We tried stimulating more frequent project announcements on a tumbler [1] but it turns out people won't magically document their projects just because it's there; it requires someone to actually run it. Talk to people, get pics etc. That's work. With tweets it might be easier, as long as there's something to link to.

Something else to consider: couldn't it be up to directors to manage such public-facing accounts?

m.

[1] http://blog.london.hackspace.org.uk/

[Sam Cook]

Right russs & co are back from Glasto so shall we try this again? 

my 2p: the account should be used for announcements (i.e. "Event tonight" and "Event just added"; can this be automated?) but I do think it should be used to respond to direct questions; either for interviews (often as not with a "We're not that kind of "hack" space) or for specific information. The reason I think this is that the twitter account will be the main point of contact for some people and whilst most responses will be "Read the wiki" it means that for the rare occasion that it's not people get useful information. As well as being another point of contact for those who may not have access to the full net (for example when we used twitter to organise a ton of stuff at maker faire). 

On a related note one of the most common (in fact the most common) "@londonhackspace" request is for interviews etc - how do we want to deal with this? let others just watch the stream and have who ever feels like it respond or do we want a group of people who can at least give vaguely consistent responses?

S

[Martin Dittus]

Other organisations elect a press officer. Worth considering?

m.

[Sam Cook]

I suppose a big consideration is whether we even want a public "face" it's not as though we have any political stance etc so beyond the basics of the space (which we list on the press page [1]). Other than possibly forwarding people to someone who may know something on a topic is there much the space itself would say on any topic?

S

[1] http://wiki.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Press

[Katie Sutton]

On 28 June 2011 12:30, Martin Dittus <dek...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Other organisations elect a press officer. Worth considering?

I'd say definitely worth considering, if only so there's a unified
"face" of Hackspace that press can go to. Obviously the officer can
sanity-check with the members if needed. And with the AGM coming up,
now's a great time to think about it.

--
Katie Sutton
http://tajasel.org

"The ‘Net is a waste of time, and that’s exactly what’s right about
it." ~ William Gibson

[Lucy Proctor]

Don't get a press officer - they are really annoying and their main job is to say no and peddle misinformation. They also end up being very powerful as the gate keepers to info and your organisation will immediately become more political.

[Charles Yarnold]

I think thats my main issue, if we have a "face" we need to decide what that face is, and thats a mailing list thread I'm not looking forward to trolling through.

On 28 June 2011 12:40, Sam Cook <sam.lind...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Sam Cook]

Basic info only then or not even that? 

[scary boots]

Hey Lucy, I'm a press officer! We communicate for people who aren't good at it, and sure we sometimes say 'No'. Short for 'No, that'll lead to a WHOLE HOST of trouble.'

Sure, having one spokeperson/control point does mean that the group has to decide a stance. That's a unified response thing, not a 'press officers are political' thing.

Yours,

a power hungry comms/media person

[Lucy Proctor]

Yeh, my boyfreind is one too. I'm sure you're very good at what you do. But from my end, you stop individuals from saying what they think to protect managers and the organisation. Which is a good thing sometimes for the organisation, but can also turn it into something quite different from the community that hack space currently is. It also means the individuals lose control of the message going out (eg. teachers not being allowed to talk truthfully about schools and education, DfES in control, damages teachers reputation).

[Robert Leverington]

On 2011-06-28, Lucy Proctor wrote:
> Yeh, my boyfreind is one too. I'm sure you're very good at what you do. But
> from my end, you stop individuals from saying what they think to protect
> managers and the organisation. Which is a good thing sometimes for the
> organisation, but can also turn it into something quite different from the
> community that hack space currently is. It also means the individuals lose
> control of the message going out (eg. teachers not being allowed to talk
> truthfully about schools and education, DfES in control, damages teachers
> reputation).

While this may be true of for-profit enterprises, I'd like to think that
the unique open nature of our hackspace makes this something that we
should be fairly immune from.

I like the idea of having a press officer, earlier it was suggested that
the directors be responsible for this but it isn't necessarily something
that is appropriate for those positions - and this neatly formalises the
role.

Of course, even with a press officer there will never be anything
stopping members from responding to tweets from their own accounts if
there is something they disagree with or feel they need to speak out
about.

I think the key role of a press officer would be to point people in the
direction of someone who is in the best position to respond to it.

Robert

[scary boots]

Ah, you're a journo. Of course you hate press officers, but you also need us. Most organisations, most of the time aren't covering up malpractice. In these cases, we save you from having to wade through every bumbling member of staff before hitting the one guy who can tell you what you need. In the cases where the press officer is doing damage limitation.. what do you expect, it's the information age (excuse me while I puke).

Agree with you Robert that a Hackspace press officer would have few if any of the downsides already mentioned due to the lack of a command structure/sanctions.

I'd do it, but I don't know you guys well enough and fear conflict of interest.

[tom]

can I be the face of LHS?

I attach my photo to help you decide

http://www.trollface.net/trollface.png

[Ravi Kotecha]

I'm not sure why we want to give consistent replies to queries, I'd be pretty happy with an IRC-to-Twitter bot which any of the @ops can reply to. 

Having a press officer is something that might be valuable but I'm not sure manning the twitter account should be their responsibility because a lot of the queries ("when can I come and visit?") won't be from the press.

[George Buckenham]

I've always been a fan of IRC-Twitter gateways. I liked
@londonlinkspace when it was about, because it let me know what people
in #london-hack-space were chatting about without having to catch up
on the channel itself (until I had something to say). The flipside is
that the channel gets polluted with tweets, and that that people on
IRC aren't always the most respectable face of an organization.
'Course, I'm not sure we need respectability, but there you go. And it
also means that the twitter account might become a little chattier,
and less announce-only.

--G

[Sam Cook]

On 28 June 2011 16:36, George Buckenham <v.twen...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've always been a fan of IRC-Twitter gateways. I liked
@londonlinkspace when it was about, because it let me know what people
in #london-hack-space were chatting about without having to catch up
on the channel itself (until I had something to say). The flipside is
that the channel gets polluted with tweets, and that that people on
IRC aren't always the most respectable face of an organization.
'Course, I'm not sure we need respectability, but there you go. And it
also means that the twitter account might become a little chattier,
and less announce-only.

I think that it's probably better to keep the main @ account to more event stuff; Solexious is right that a lot of the stuff coming from the HSnotts I just ignore now because of signal/noise

> Having a press officer is something that might be valuable but I'm not sure
> manning the twitter account should be their responsibility because a lot of
> the queries ("when can I come and visit?") won't be from the press.

I don't see a reason that any "press officer" couldn't respond to those requests as well: I'd see their role more as someone who can forward you to what you need to know about the space. I guess rather than a public "face" more of a switching service. 

I don't think that the space really should take a stance on much (other than things we can all agree on ie the space is a good thing) so having the account work more as a forwarding system may be better. "when can I come down" A" well you need to look here and here ..." etc 

 

[Russ Garrett]

OK, let me try and sum up my ideas on this while trying not to sound
too much of a social media/PR wanker (I think I've failed though). The
main aims I want to achieve with the twitter account are:

1) To limit volume - we have 2,500 followers and they are valuable. We
don't want to lose them through over-tweeting.
2) To control the technical level of the tweets - a lot of our
followers aren't that geeky and we don't want to overwhelm people.
3) (and I admit to being a bit obsessive about this) To ensure a
consistent voice so it doesn't seem too formal/like 300 people are
tweeting from the same account.

So, with that in mind:

Almost all tweets/retweets should be about *what is happening in the
space*. So, either scheduled events or particularly notable
happenings. That said, we don't want to be too repetitive, which is
why I don't tweet about the Tuesday meetup every week and why I'm
opposed to having some kind of automated system. And we don't want to
be too talkative either. That said, this doesn't happen enough.

I think that replies to questions asked directly to the twitter
account are probably fine. But, you are making an official
pronouncement as the space, and a few of these have been a tiny bit
off-tone (note my previous comment about obsession). So I think the
best bet is to check with these in IRC first.

Another awkward thing is when someone we know asks @londonhackspace a
question and it gets answered by someone who doesn't know that they
already know what they're talking about. If that makes sense. But I
don't have a good answer to that one.

</monologue>

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Mark Steward]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Russ Garrett <ru...@garrett.co.uk> wrote:

</monologue>

I agree entirely, and think posting on IRC when not announcing an event solves it.  The collective mind can then raise objections such as "that's not very cool", "they already know that" or "that makes no sense at all".  The only risk is a little extra noise and some collective tweet drafting, but that's sort of fun anyway.

Mark

[Mark Steward]

Another general concern for Hackspace is that they're a single point of failure.  I'd rather depend on the hive mind or community than an individual who could disappear or get upset and put people off tweeting.  Also, I wonder how you'd ensure timely responses from one person.

Mark

[Dan W]

On Jun 28, 4:36 pm, George Buckenham <v.twenty....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've always been a fan of IRC-Twitter gateways. I liked
> @londonlinkspace when it was about, because it let me know what people
> in #london-hack-space were chatting about without having to catch up
> on the channel itself (until I had something to say).

I've restarted @londonlinkspace.

Has anyone got any recommendations for Ruby IRC libraries/frameworks?
I'm currently using Isaac, which doesn't notice that it's become
disconnected from IRC and as such can't reconnect automatically.

[Adrian Godwin]

Is the inverse of that available ?

I occasionally wonder what's going on in people's twitter channels
(and yes ! I even have an account!) but quickly remember why I don't
like it : low information-density web pages with a great deal of
clicking to read a bit of history, and the presence of every forwarded
retweet (not sure of the terminology, but I don't want to read a tweet
followed by 20 copies stating that someone that it was neat and passed
it on to his friends.)

What I'd like is an IRC channel (or similar scrolling text format)
that showed tweets with, at most, a line saying 'retweeted by
@burble'.

Also, inb4 wv. I don't care THAT much.

-artag the caveman.

[Alex Pounds]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 10:39:24AM +0100, Adrian Godwin wrote:
> On 6/29/11, Dan W <d...@iamdanw.com> wrote:

> > I've restarted @londonlinkspace.
>
> Is the inverse of that available ? What I'd like is an IRC channel (or

> similar scrolling text format) that showed tweets with, at most, a line
> saying 'retweeted by @burble'.

If you use Irssi as an IRC client, what you want is Twirssi:
http://twirssi.com/

--
Alex Pounds .~. http://www.alexpounds.com/
/V\ http://www.ethicsgirls.com/
// \\
"Variables won't; Constants aren't" /( )\
^`~'^

[Adrian Godwin]

Cheers, I do use irssi. Will investigate.

-adrian

[Dan W]

Only skimmed the whole discussion but here's my proposal.

1. @londonhackspace should be announce only.

Events, workshops, pledge reminders etc. It gets too noisy otherwise.

2. No personality

It's a room full of stuff and a group of individuals. It's not a
person itself.

3. No replies

Hackspace is a collection of individuals with frequently differing
opinions. Folks should reply from their own personal account, so it's
clear who's opinion the reply is. This prevents people reporting
"londonhackspace said lulzsec is cool" when it's in reality "member of
hackspace said...".

4. No retweeting compliments.

Ever.

5. No relevant links

Avoid unnecessary noise. Follow individual hackspace members if you'd
like links & personality.


- Dan

PS I think the bike shed should be painted yellow.

[Sam Cook]

On 29 June 2011 12:04, Dan W <d...@iamdanw.com> wrote:

3. No replies

Hackspace is a collection of individuals with frequently differing
opinions. Folks should reply from their own personal account, so it's
clear who's opinion the reply is. This prevents people reporting
"londonhackspace said lulzsec is cool" when it's in reality "member of
hackspace said...".

Whilst I agree that the space shouldn't hold opinions what about direct questions? the @ gets a good number of "I'm interesting in coming by today; can I?" style questions. 

S

[Katie Sutton]

On 29 June 2011 10:41, Alex Pounds <al...@alexpounds.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 10:39:24AM +0100, Adrian Godwin wrote:
>> On 6/29/11, Dan W <d...@iamdanw.com> wrote:
>> > I've restarted @londonlinkspace.
>>
>> Is the inverse of that available ?  What I'd like is an IRC channel (or
>> similar scrolling text format) that showed tweets with, at most, a line
>> saying 'retweeted by @burble'.
>
> If you use Irssi as an IRC client, what you want is Twirssi:
> http://twirssi.com/

+1 for irssi though if you follow an obscene number of people you'll
not see every tweet - if that's important to you. Of course, I
realise not everyone follows as many people as I do though :)

[Martin Dittus]

Lost out in what? Twitter fame? Brand awareness? Social media mindshare?

Imho it's simply a channel to inform members & friends of stuff that's currently going on. Atm the space will grow on its own accord without a need for any "marketing" efforts.

(I probably misunderstood your point. My apologies.)

m.

On 29 Jun 2011, at 13:09, Alex Pounds wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 04:04:34AM -0700, Dan W wrote:
>> 2. No personality
>> It's a room full of stuff and a group of individuals. It's not a
>> person itself.
>

> I disagree with this. The "Personality" of the Hackspace is important and
> should come through. Twitter's a conversational medium (both in the sense
> of back-and-forth and in the sense of informality); if we treat it as a
> JIT calendar then we've lost out, in my view.

[Paul Dart]

On 29 June 2011 12:04, Dan W <d...@iamdanw.com> wrote:

> Only skimmed the whole discussion but here's my proposal.
>

> [Snip lots of good ideas]
>
> - Dan

I agree with this. Event/space relevant announce-only mode please!

No 'personality' or other rubbish. Let's keep the noise out.

Paul

[Alex Pounds]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 04:04:34AM -0700, Dan W wrote:

> 2. No personality
> It's a room full of stuff and a group of individuals. It's not a
> person itself.

I disagree with this. The "Personality" of the Hackspace is important and

should come through. Twitter's a conversational medium (both in the sense
of back-and-forth and in the sense of informality); if we treat it as a
JIT calendar then we've lost out, in my view.

--

[Martin Dittus]

After a second read I realised this may have come across as more aggressive than intended. Let me attempt to paraphrase.

Can you give an example for something we would miss out on by running the Twitter account as a write-only announcement bot? Atm it seems like the most appropriate use for this organisation.

m.

[Russ Garrett]

On 29 June 2011 13:16, Martin Dittus <dek...@gmail.com> wrote:
> (I probably misunderstood your point. My apologies.)

In my opinion, "personality" can be as simple as not sounding inhuman
by mechanically tweeting every single event. This is what I alluded to
in my previous message, and I think we're on the correct lines
currently. I don't think things need to be changed massively.

As much as people might find the entire subject distasteful, our space
would not exist today without marketing; I learned last year to stop
worrying and use social media to our advantage. If we didn't, I'm
fairly sure we would have gone under.

(I agree with the rest of Dan's points, and also with Mark on the
single-point-of-failure of a designated Twitter person.)

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Martin Dittus]

I don't think there's an attitude against marketing, I think there's an attitude against marketing without purpose.

(I now realise that I should have never put that term in "quotes", the intention was not to disparage the general notion of marketing; it simply wasn't clear what the purpose behind Alex's suggestion was.)

[Russ Garrett]

On 29 June 2011 14:05, Martin Dittus <dek...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think there's an attitude against marketing, I think there's an attitude against marketing without purpose.

I don't think anyone was condoning marketing without purpose, so I
don't think it's worth continuing the argument :).

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Alex Pounds]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 01:16:03PM +0100, Martin Dittus wrote:
> Lost out in what? Twitter fame? Brand awareness? Social media mindshare?
> Imho it's simply a channel to inform members & friends of stuff that's
> currently going on. Atm the space will grow on its own accord without a
> need for any "marketing" efforts.

It's not about active marketing. Fundamentally, the Hackspace is
interesting & fun. Its twitter feed should reflect that. (I think we do a
reasonable job of that already). Pure announcements are boring. I'd like
to see us continue to (for example) show off neat stuff our members have
made, link to interesting stuff on the web, or other "on-topic" tweets
that aren't "this is going to happen," or "this happened."

[Tim Storey]

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Hash: SHA1

On 29/06/2011 14:50, Alex Pounds wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 01:16:03PM +0100, Martin Dittus wrote:
>> Lost out in what? Twitter fame? Brand awareness? Social media mindshare?
>> Imho it's simply a channel to inform members & friends of stuff that's
>> currently going on. Atm the space will grow on its own accord without a
>> need for any "marketing" efforts.
>
> It's not about active marketing. Fundamentally, the Hackspace is
> interesting & fun. Its twitter feed should reflect that. (I think we do a
> reasonable job of that already). Pure announcements are boring. I'd like
> to see us continue to (for example) show off neat stuff our members have
> made, link to interesting stuff on the web, or other "on-topic" tweets
> that aren't "this is going to happen," or "this happened."
>

+1 from me
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[Martin Dittus]

Yeah this would be ace, it would however require someone to drive that. Like a press officer. Or a twitter project group.

Did you know the Hackspace has a blog? (It never really took off.)
http://blog.london.hackspace.org.uk/

Atm the best ongoing effort at informing people beyond mere event announcements is the frequent LHS News email. It works because Robert is willing to put his time into it; it was his idea and it lives because of his efforts.

I'm thinking this is a prime case for rule 4 :)

m.

[Sam Cook]

On 29 June 2011 13:53, Martin Dittus <dek...@gmail.com> wrote:

Can you give an example for something we would miss out on by running the Twitter account as a write-only announcement bot? Atm it seems like the most appropriate use for this organisation.

I think we will lose out on the chance for people to use the twitter account to find out more about the space. If people find the space via twitter that's where they are most likely to ask questions about it; responding from the space account will give the questioner reassurance that it is an organised entity (rather than some random person responding with no obvious affiliation to the space or multiple people responding saying the same thing). 

Using the twitter as an announce-bot doesn't do anything that's not already covered by the events calendar. I'm not advocating making the account a heavy use channel but using it to respond directly to people lets them know that the space is active and gives it a more friendly and approachable aspect.

I'm more than happy to send replies and such from the account (having Okey'd it with IRC first) as I tend to have twitter open most of the time anyway. Obviously more than one person should speak with the account but I think that's what we have at the moment. 

S

[Katie Sutton]

On 29 June 2011 14:50, Alex Pounds <al...@alexpounds.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 01:16:03PM +0100, Martin Dittus wrote:
>> Lost out in what? Twitter fame? Brand awareness? Social media mindshare?
>> Imho it's simply a channel to inform members & friends of stuff that's
>> currently going on. Atm the space will grow on its own accord without a
>> need for any "marketing" efforts.
>
> It's not about active marketing. Fundamentally, the Hackspace is
> interesting & fun. Its twitter feed should reflect that. (I think we do a
> reasonable job of that already). Pure announcements are boring. I'd like
> to see us continue to (for example) show off neat stuff our members have
> made, link to interesting stuff on the web, or other "on-topic" tweets
> that aren't "this is going to happen," or "this happened."

+1

People will be more likely to visit and make their own stuff if they
get to see the neat stuff existing members get up to. "An event about
X is happening" is one thing; "An event about X happened and look what
@foo made there!" is better.

[Charles Yarnold]

On 29 June 2011 16:52, Katie Sutton <ka...@tajasel.org> wrote:

On 29 June 2011 14:50, Alex Pounds <al...@alexpounds.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 01:16:03PM +0100, Martin Dittus wrote:
>> Lost out in what? Twitter fame? Brand awareness? Social media mindshare?
>> Imho it's simply a channel to inform members & friends of stuff that's
>> currently going on. Atm the space will grow on its own accord without a
>> need for any "marketing" efforts.
>
> It's not about active marketing. Fundamentally, the Hackspace is
> interesting & fun. Its twitter feed should reflect that. (I think we do a
> reasonable job of that already). Pure announcements are boring. I'd like
> to see us continue to (for example) show off neat stuff our members have
> made, link to interesting stuff on the web, or other "on-topic" tweets
> that aren't "this is going to happen," or "this happened."

+1

People will be more likely to visit and make their own stuff if they
get to see the neat stuff existing members get up to.  "An event about
X is happening" is one thing; "An event about X happened and look what
@foo made there!" is better.

Again, this happens with other hackspace's accounts, and it turns to white noise... 

[Katie Sutton]

How can you be sure of that? People not replying to those tweets from
spaces doesn't necessarily mean they aren't interested/inspired to
drop by the Hackspace; it just means they had nothing meaningful to
say and didn't want to just say "cool!" to make sure they knew.

It doesn't have to be done for every single project that someone is
working on/finishes; just a selected few. Hell, not every person will
want their project featured.

[Charles Yarnold]

> Again, this happens with other hackspace's accounts, and it turns to white
> noise...

How can you be sure of that?  People not replying to those tweets from
spaces doesn't necessarily mean they aren't interested/inspired to
drop by the Hackspace; it just means they had nothing meaningful to
say and didn't want to just say "cool!" to make sure they knew.

It doesn't have to be done for every single project that someone is
working on/finishes; just a selected few. Hell, not every person will
want their project featured.

I can be sure of that as I'm talking about my personal experience. I speak for me self, but I have others comment to me on the spame thing.

[Dan W]

+1. Minimal noise please, says my grumpy old man instinct.

Engaging people is nice but that can come from individual members
rather than The Space as an entity.

[Russ Garrett]

On 29 June 2011 17:01, Charles Yarnold <charles...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I can be sure of that as I'm talking about my personal experience. I speak
> for me self, but I have others comment to me on the spame thing.

Seems to me that you're just saying that you don't want it to be too
noisy, which is fine. So do I. But that doesn't mean that we can't
occasionally link to interesting things that people have made.

If you want a dry list of everything that's happening at the space,
unfollow the Twitter account and use the Google calendar - it's much
more useful for that.

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Katie Sutton]

On 29 June 2011 17:01, Charles Yarnold <charles...@gmail.com> wrote:

On the contrary, before I trimmed my followers last month I followed a
bunch of Hackspaces to see what people were up to.

What is interesting/boring/noisy to you is not necessarily
interesting/boring/noisy to others, and honestly, shoot me for saying
so if you want, but more people coming by the space and potentially
becoming members based on what they've seen others doing is not a bad
thing.

[Sam Cook]

Seems that part of this is whether we want @londonhackspace to be for members or the public. 

Would people be happy if we set up @londonhackspaceannounce which we can attach to the google calendar and just announce events whilst the main list allows people to ask questions and actually work more as "this is a taste of what we're about"

S

[Charles Yarnold]

*BANG* ;) But on a serious note, we arn't starved for members at the moment, or actively trying to recruit members.

As Sam said, its a question of what we want to achieve with the account. 

"Seems to me that you're just saying that you don't want it to be too

noisy, which is fine. So do I. But that doesn't mean that we can't
occasionally link to interesting things that people have made."

Yes I agree with that, I just got the feeling from some of the talk of upping the number of tweets that the signal of the tweets was going to take a nose dive. I like that when I see a tweet from @londonhackpace its going to be worth reading.

[Dan W]

On Jun 29, 5:05 pm, Russ Garrett <r...@garrett.co.uk> wrote:

> Seems to me that you're just saying that you don't want it to be too
> noisy, which is fine. So do I. But that doesn't mean that we can't
> occasionally link to interesting things that people have made.
>
> If you want a dry list of everything that's happening at the space,
> unfollow the Twitter account and use the Google calendar - it's much
> more useful for that.

Fair point. What I'm mainly wanting to avoid is the @londonhackspace
account appearing spammy/silly/social media consultanty and that being
seen as representative of me as a member of the space.

Dan

[Charles Yarnold]

On 29 June 2011 17:19, Charles Yarnold <charles...@gmail.com> wrote:

*BANG* ;) But on a serious note, we arn't starved for members at the moment, or actively trying to recruit members.

Should have read "...or actively trying to recruit members in my opinion"

[Sam Cook]

On 29 June 2011 17:19, Charles Yarnold <charles...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes I agree with that, I just got the feeling from some of the talk of upping the number of tweets that the signal of the tweets was going to take a nose dive. I like that when I see a tweet from @londonhackpace its going to be worth reading.

The impression I got was that there were a lot of people who wanted to cut back the number of tweets we already have to just announces

Quick straw poll, for those that actually use twitter and follow @londonhackspace does it:

tweet too much

tweet too little

tweet just right?

Personally I think it's fine: shout outs for up coming events and occasional replies to direct questions that are appropriate for it to answer (eg "what equipment do you have")

S

[Alex Pounds]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 05:10:50PM +0100, Sam Cook wrote:
> Would people be happy if we set up @londonhackspaceannounce which we can
> attach to the google calendar and just announce events whilst the main list
> allows people to ask questions and actually work more as "this is a taste of
> what we're about"

No, I don't think we should split the audience, and there are already
several channels that solely deal with upcoming events.

[Sam Kelly]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Sam Cook <sam.lind...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Quick straw poll, for those that actually use twitter and follow @londonhackspace does it:

tweet too much

tweet too little

tweet just right?

Just right - with the caveat that it's at the low end of the "just right" spread, and (say) twice as often wouldn't be problematic at all for me.

For context, I use Tweetdeck and don't see conversations with accounts I don't follow, so that doesn't factor in as spam or even flow for me.

If we set up an IRC->twitter bot, how about putting a rate limiter on it? "Tweet not sent, because @londonhackspace has already tweeted twice this hour. Please wait till 17:00 GMT." or something similar.


--
Sam Kelly, http://www.eithin.co.uk/

That's it.  We're not messing around anymore, we're buying a bigger dictionary.  -  Tibor Fischer, The Thought Gang.

[Katie Sutton]

I think it tweets about right at the moment, although as I've made
obvious I'd like to see the odd "look what members have been up to"
tweet as well, even if it's just one every couple of weeks.

It's not just for strangers to see, it could be interesting to members as well.

[Katie Sutton]

On 29 June 2011 15:23, Sam Cook <sam.lind...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not advocating making the account a
> heavy use channel but using it to respond directly to people lets them know
> that the space is active and gives it a more friendly and approachable
> aspect.

+1 to this part as well.

[Dan W]

On Jun 29, 5:43 pm, Katie Sutton <ka...@tajasel.org> wrote:

> On 29 June 2011 17:26, Sam Cook <sam.lindenrat...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think it tweets about right at the moment, although as I've made
> obvious I'd like to see the odd "look what members have been up to"
> tweet as well, even if it's just one every couple of weeks.
>
> It's not just for strangers to see, it could be interesting to members as well.

What's the current best way to see what folks are making? A show and
tell evening? Or is the current informal tuesdays & mailing list &
open days & hackspace newsletter sufficient?

Dan

[Charles Yarnold]

On 29 June 2011 17:26, Sam Cook <sam.lind...@gmail.com> wrote:

Quick straw poll, for those that actually use twitter and follow @londonhackspace does it:

tweet too much

tweet too little

tweet just right?

Just right for me, could tweet slightly more with out it being a problem. 

[scary boots]

tweet too little. I use my twitter feed for a more social/personality based feed. Event notifications are not what I associate it with. I'd pay more attention if it was more interesting.

Not actively looking for members? Are we okay with the £££ now then? I thought we were still not quite comfortable...