The Mozilla Science Lab has a new regular online event: a twitter book club.
In October, for Ada Lovelace Day we read Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World. In December we read Weapons of Math Destruction.
We ran a twitter poll helping us decide the book for February. I re-tweeted the poll and the lovely Chris Madan replied with a great question:
My reply of “Basically we read the book and then have an hour set aside to tweet about it using #mozreads” is true, but let’s use this blog post to unpack it a little more.
Q: What’s the point of a twitter book club?
There are so many great books and so many amazing things to learn that it’s often difficult to get started! In the Mozilla Science Lab book club we want to introduce some of the really interesting new books to our community…
…and discuss them! We try to pick ones we think you’d like, but getting a conversation going around the topic is the most important part.
Maybe you want to share some additional perspectives
Or you might have some great examples of the ideas in the book put into practice
You could want to shout out something cool that you’d learned
Or you could provide a little more context for some of the topics covered in the book
Any and all of the above (and so many more) motivations are great examples of taking part in our twitter book chat.
Q: How do I take part?
Grab your favourite tweeting device at the designated time, and you’re ready to go.
We use the hashtag #mozreads. If you click on that blue text you’ll see all the tweets that are part of the conversation.
You can join that conversation either by replying to one of those tweets, or by starting your own thread.
(If you’re not sure of this twitter jargon then check out these handy dandy guide to hashtags, threading and tagging!)
The hashtag is the most important part – that’s how people will be able to link your tweet to the conversation. If you can remember to put it in your replies to others too then everyone will be able to follow along.
Q: What if I’m late to the party and I haven’t read the book?
That’s ok! Come and join in anyway. You can ask questions and learn from the community members who have read it. And you’ll leave knowing whether you want to pick up a copy for yourself!
Q: What if I miss the conversation?!
The coolest thing about having the book club on twitter is that it sticks around for a long time! You can read back and join in with your thoughts at any time.
Q: What if i have other questions?
Ask away, we’d love to answer them! You can send a tweet to @MozillaScience or @kirstie_j, or you can ask in our gitter chat room, or you can even send an email (sciencelab AT mozillafoundation.org or kw401 AT cam.ac.uk).