Twitter Improves Your Meeting Experience

Many health professionals have difficulty grasping the concept and utility of Twitter. I must admit that I carried the same feelings until ACR 2014 when I realized the value and power of Twitter at medical meetings. To understand Twitter you first need to understand what a “Tweet” is.

A Tweet is, "the expression of a moment or an idea.” At medical conferences, a Tweet might include a new medical innovation, a new idea, or new data. A Tweet can include text, photos, or video.

Tweets are organized by “hashtags” denoted by #. A hashtag assigns a topic to a Tweet. Tweets that contain #CRA2015 are about the 2015 CRA Meeting. You can search for all Tweets containing #CRA2015. Click on a hashtag to see all Tweets related to that topic.

What should you Tweet? The best Tweets share meaningful moments - both big and small. If you think something is interesting, chances are your followers will, too.

When you follow someone on Twitter, their Tweets instantly show up in your timeline. Similarly, your Tweets show up in your followers’ timelines. To see interesting Tweets about Rheumatology, follow interesting people or organizations including: RheumReports, Nature Reviews Rheumatology, Rheumatology Update, and one of my favourites, Dr. Jack Cush.

It’s amazing what you can learn from Twitter and I would encourage everyone to try it out at this year’s CRA meeting. With the use of Twitter we can put the CRA on an international stage!

Follow RheumReports on Twitter as we Tweet about all of our new posts. You’ll always be up to date about everything happening at this year’s CRA meeting.

More reports from 2015 CRA & AHPA