Rules for invited presenters

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• You must have a Twitter account

• Presenters are allocated a 30 minute slot (see the schedule) within which time they may tweet as often, or as infrequently as they wish.

• Every tweet must start with the hashtag #BTCon18 (e.g., #BTCon18)

• Links to extra text (e.g. tweet extensions) are not permitted

• Pictures, graphs and other media are encouraged
   

Rules for accepted presenters

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• You must have a Twitter account

• Presenters are allocated a maximum of 4 tweets, each a maximum of 280 characters long

• Every tweet must be numbered (1 – 4) and start with the hashtag #BTCon18 (e.g., 1 #BTCon18)

• Presentations should start with an introductory tweet, follow by 2 tweets describing methods and results, and end with a summary tweet

• Links to extra text (e.g. tweet extensions) are not permitted

• Links to supporting information (e.g. scientific papers) are encouraged. 

• Pictures, graphs and other media are encouraged
   

Guidelines

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• You will be assigned a 15 minute time slot in which to tweet your research which will be determined based on your geographic location. Ensure you give us your time zone information during the sign up.

• Draft your tweets ahead of time in order to avoid issues during the event.

• Make sure your account is not private and your tweets are not protected, otherwise we will be unable to see them.

• We strongly recommend threading your posts as this allows followers to click on a specific tweet and see what came before and after. To thread your presentation, simply reply to your own tweets. We recognise, however, that threading is not always possible, particularly when scheduling tweets.

• We ask that presenters provide descriptions for any images attached to their tweets, using Twitter's accessibility options, in order to best communicate their science to as many people as possible. Instructions for increasing the accessibility of visual tweets can be found here: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/picture-descriptions

• Please use suitable graph color schemes to make sure they're accessible to those with color blindness.

• Discussion and questions are encouraged. When replying to an individual or asking a question, please use their handle (e.g., @biotweeps) and the conference hashtag #BTCon18. 

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Scheduling

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• Presentations will be scheduled in one of three time-zone regions each day:

  • ​​Session 1: 1700 - 2100 BIOT (British Indian Ocean Time; GMT +6; CST +12)

  • Session 2: 1700 - 2100 GMT (Greenwich Meridian Time; BIOT -6; CST +6) 

  • Session 3: 1700 - 2100 CST (Central Standard Time; GMT -6; BIOT -12)

• Specific scheduling of themes will be decided after the submission deadline has passed.​

• Presenters may be allocated to a time zone where it is not possible for them to tweet live. In such circumstances we suggest the use of scheduled tweets.
   

Tips and tricks

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• Follow others
  If you are new to twitter, follow some of the larger scientist groups to catch a glimpse of how you can tweet to reach out with your work and to connect with other researchers. For instance, the main @biotweeps account.
   

• Space out your tweets, but not too much!
  You get 15 minutes to present your 4 tweets. Our advice is to tweet one per minute or similar, which will then allow some time for questions or comments.
   

• Get organised!
  Tweetdeck and other platforms allow you follow many feeds simultaneously. For example you can set up threads to just show tweets which contain certain tags such as #BTCon18. If you want to make sure you see all the tweets from the participants during the conference you can subscribe to the main Biotweeps account (@biotweeps) and set it up as a feed in Tweetdeck. Alternatively, make your own twitter list of users which you specifically want to get tweets from.
   

• Follow topic-specific presentations
  When we introduce talks we will take care to use the appropriate topic tags as shown in the abstract index. This makes it easy for you to follow presentations of particular interest, but note that it will most likely only be the introductory tweet to a presentation which will contain the topic tag.
   

• Get creative!
  Be creative with how you present your work. Use graphs, photographs, animated gifs or infographics to get people’s attention.