Many of us are familiar with the concept of in person academic conferences. However, digital spaces allow for such connectivity that there has been a movement towards conducting conferences online, and not only through Zoom. The Public Archaeology Twitter Conference (PATC) is just what the title implies; a conference for public archaeologists, held solely on twitter.
Participants present their papers via Twitter, during an allotted 15 minute time slot. They discuss their paper though 12-20 tweets, using the relevant hashtag. They then can respond to questions posed to them on twitter, and can use any kind of media in their presentations and responses, from photos to gifs. While a conference for this year has not yet been announced, you can access previous presentations through searching the designated hashtag for each year (#PATC1, #PATC2, #PATC3, #PATC4, and #PATC5). In previous years public archaeologists such as Kate Ellenberger, Lorna-Jane Richardson, Shawn Graham, Sara Head, Katherine Cook, and Charles Webster, among others, have participated in these conferences.
Below is part of Kate Ellenberger's (@precatlady) presentation in the PATC4 in 2019 as an example.
In my opinion, PATC is a wonderful opportunity for us to explore the ability of digital spaces, particularly social media, to connect us and allow for academia to become accessible to all. I'm wondering if you guys see the value in twitter conferences or do you feel that it's too disjointed, particularly because of the many different tweets this entails?
I think that using spaces such as Twitter is a really interesting idea because it removes some of the barriers to participating in conferences from an academic perspective, such as the financial burden of traveling to and participating in the actual event. You can essentially participate in this conference from anywhere in the world, without ever leaving your bed! Additionally, members of the public can easily access the conference and benefit from what's being shared. Online conferences on a public platform remove some of the gatekeeping aspect of conferences and academia in general. However, this also leaves conferences and their participants particularly open to vitriol from trolls and other particularly negative people on the internet. Do you think that this is something worth enduring for the benefit of the accessibility feature of online/twitter conferences? I'd love to hear some of your thoughts!
Sources: https://publicarchaeologyconference.wordpress.com/
