#tlchat live & get ready for more Café

We’ve been playing around with the idea of beginning a live focused conversation around the hashtag #tlchat for quite some time.  It’s the start of a new school year.  Why not now?

The goal is to get a conversation going on a particular evening around a focused topic, much in the same way that #edchat has been operating for three years.  (For more examples of these scheduled chat, chat out Jerry Blumengarten/Cybraryman’s list of Educational Chats on Twitter.)

If you substitute #tlchat for #edchat in this video, you’ll get a feel for the possible goals of a real-time Twitter chat.

So let’s give it a try.  Keeping in mind some of the existing chats, how about we aim for a regular chat at 8PM Eastern on the second Monday of each month?

Confusing note: If the first Monday is a holiday, like this month, we’ll move the chat to the third Monday. I think this pattern will work because our TL Café is on the first Monday of each month.  The Twitter chat would most always be on the week following the Café.

So let’s aim for a Monday, September 17th launch!

To get this off the ground we’re going to need a few leaders–active tweeters who can seed our conversations and get the word out.  Please let me know if you are interested in being a founder/leader of the chat!

I’ve started a Google Doc for brainstorming good monthly questions and for identifying a few volunteer leaders to provoke and sustain the conversation. That document is also accessible on our new #tlchat wiki.  Please let me know if you want to be an editor or designer for this baby wiki too!  It is now just a shell.

After we get a few ideas we’ll add polls for voting on a schedule of chat ideas.

And while we’re on the subject of networking and new school years . . .

The TL Café is gearing up for another spectacular year of free webinars, including the Back to School Special: Rocking the New Year on Monday, September 10th at 8PM Eastern.

Guests are Gwyneth Jones, Tiffany Whitehead, & Jennifer LaGarde.   Looking for great ideas?  Be there!

Filed under: network, social networking, tlcafe, twitter