Hurdles #WPMeta Twitter chat had in past years

Jai WordPress People!

In 2015-2016, we conducted various chats. In those, we tried different formats of chats Like Open Mic, with Guest, No guest Just questions. Each chat has its own charm. I’m Posting hurdles we faced in past few days.

1. Chatting on Twitter is Hard.
This was so called resistance to change when I proposed the Idea of Twitter chat in my friend circle. We are using chatting tools over two decades now. IRC, Yahoo Chatrooms were the Places we started learning more about the Internet. Twitter is not new to us. just sticking to hashtag over search or using Search Column is Tweetdeck is an easier way to Join in the Chat.

Mostly One account is treated as Host account, and questions are tweeted with Q1, Q2… prefixed to it. All you have to respond with A1, A2… prefixed and hashtag to it and encourage interaction among the group. It took little time for people to understand, was sorted over time.

2. Suitable timing was issue
Early Few chats were hosted on Monday evening. In WordCamp Pune & Nashik, many suggestions came that Monday’s timings don’t work for them. As Monday evening in India is Monday Morning in the US, Most Monday evening is the Conference Hours with US Based Clients. So we changed the day to Tuesday. and tried different timings.

3. Transcript Logging Issue.
The sole objective of #WPMeta Twitter chat was to make sure that chats are logged for further learning purpose. We used Storify to log chats which were free to use and great utility. In May 2016, Adobe acquired Livefyre (Parent company of Storify), In the transition period, it was hard to search and archive more than 100 tweets in Storify. Average #WPmeta chat was having around 200+ tweets that need to be archived. which leads us to have a break.

Over a year I met many people in the WordPress community, People kept asking me what Happened to #WPMeta chat, Though they hardly participated in chats they loved to read transcripts. Which inspired me to publish this series of #WPmeta Journey.