394- Brains of A Feather - January 2019

As announed in my previous entry 2 weeks ago, Katie & I co-created a new twitter chat we called - with my wife's advice on the name : Brains Of A Feather. 

We'll host it in turns, every Wednesday at 20:00 GMT and have decided on the topics and questions, ahead for January - and shall continue monthly Skype sessions to discuss our following month. 


The chat is done by using #BrainsOfAFeather 

For January, we chose them as follow : 

9th "New Year’s resolutions, helpful or damaging ? 
16th, "creativity"
23rd 'Fav books read in 2018?"
30th "General SciFi" 

Our aims are :

• to help people to mutually support one another, but as you can see, we prefer to have, generally speaking, one monthly chat for mental health topics, and the rest shall be geeky and social ones. This will help cutting down repetition from previous twitter chats ; to prevent us from focusing only on mental illnesses and to allow 
• Furthering friendships that can be built online, between persons who share interests, common goals, share tips when the topic is creative, and so on. 

The general format we'll have is about 45 to 60 minutes of public chat using the # , and we'll encourage our participants to gather in small groups, say 4 to 6 people at a time, in twitter's direct message system, as a group chat that will be more private and allow more exchanges as if you had gone to gather over at a table during a social gathering. 

During these chats, that we encourage you to have for at least another 30-45 minutes, or more if you prefer, we'll ask you to respect our rules, which are the ones anyone should follow on any social media and in any situation :

That of curteous discourse, sharing tips and info, your passions for the topics, and so on, and never to harrass one another, especially for financial gain, or in sexual harrassement of any kind. 

To this end, we'll ask participats to be vigilent, and to copy paste and share screen shots of discussions gone wry, if they ever do. Our hope is that our followers and friends who come will help to maintain eyes over this, and that those who are currently strangers shall respect these rules and abide. 

Our chat isn't here to help you to harrass others and ask for unrealistic favours, and what you decide to do and say should be in your own best judgment, but also to our own wishes that this doesn't become an issue. 

Sometimes, as shall be our very first chat, hosted by Katie on the 9th, which is in just under 2 days, we'll probably run the chat for an hour, maybe a bit more, to allow slow typers such as myself, or those who wish to remain and chat using the # can do so and without worrying about a precise 60 minute countdown to its end. In view of the topic, it probably won't become a group direct message chat, but who knows what each person's answers to our questions may yeild. 

Hoping to see you in any and all of the topics we'll host. Stay tunes for the topics we'll announce for the next few months. Thank you.