Twitter Chatting and Challenge Hosting

Have you ever followed a Twitter chat event? Whoa, talk about eye/hand/brain coordination! For those new-ish to Twitter, this is kind of like the old chat room experience, only it's through Twitter, where you chat about a certain subject for a certain amount of time, and use a hashtag (#) so it's easy to follow only those tweets. Sometimes we call it a Twitter party too! (I feel silly explaining as if I know so much about it!) Anyway, this past week or two I have suddenly seemed to discover this whole phenomenon.

For instance, on Wednesday evening it was the launch of a new Twitter chat meant to be a conversation between book bloggers called #Bblog. (Of course any book loving person can participate) Luckily, I was able to join in for a fun conversation about reading challenges. An ironic topic for me since I just dumped a bunch of them this last week. For the schedule (which looks like it's growing quickly) click on over to their dedicated blog.

Also, just yesterday afternoon, I followed (and sort of participated) in the #followreader chat, which I've seen before but hadn't really paid attention too. This time, there was a roaring discussion about the relationship between bloggers and authors and publishers, and ever interesting ongoing topic. Also, I topic I have pretty much no clue about, so it was fun to see what so many thought and what they had to say. It has it's own blog too, where the Twitter convos are even archived.

Then, of course, a few weeks ago there was that wild Twitter party for those involved in Armchair BEA. That was fun. I would suggest, if you decide to try coming along for a Twitter chat ride, that you use something like Tweetchat.com.... very easy, plus it adds the hahstag automatically for you and it makes it much more possible for you to follow the conversation.

Anyway, one of the things we talked about during the #Bblog chat was what makes a good reading challenge host. It's something I've been wondering about since just this year I started a challenge of sorts meant to support local authors, and last year, Jessica from The Bluestocking Society and I started the Printz Project. And I haven't really done much about them since, except wonder what I should be doing about them!

So here's what I'm thinking. Little mini challenges for each one of them.

For the Support Your Local Author Challenge, I propose that current participants make a page (or post and link to it somewhere on your blog) that lists all your local authors you are interested in, and the books under each one that you hope to read. Then as you review the books, link your reviews to that page. Perhaps many of you have already done this and I just haven't been observant! Natasha from Maw Books has her list here. And I've just created my list here. (though reviews aren't linked up yet as of this writing.) Currently this challenge is a little heavy with participants from Utah (since those bloggers sort of know me) so I'd love to see people from other places, especially, get a list going so I can see who your local authors are!

The mini challenge idea for the Printz Project is simple. Read two Printz books by the end of the summer! I got all excited about this project, and then I don't think I've read a Printz book since! So I especially need to pick it up and get back on the wagon.

Let me know what you think, if you do one of these minis, and if I should figure out prizes to go along with. Here's hoping I can be a better challenge host!