If you are new to Twitter Chats, check out the note at the bottom of this page.

What:

Monthly Twitter Chat for consultants to community benefit organizations

When:

The third Tuesday of the month.
1pm – 2pm US Pacific Daylight Time

Who:

Anyone who consults to organizations whose primary purpose is community / social / humanity benefit. Consultants to nonprofits, government agencies, NGO’s, community groups and others. (And if you’re wondering if you fit, check it out and find out!)

How:

To follow the chat, enter #NPCons in the search box, either at Twitter on the web or in your Twitter API. Or you can follow by entering NPCons in the search box at the top of the page at http://tweetchat.com/

To contribute to the chat, just add #NPCons to your tweet.  (If you use TweetChat at http://tweetchat.com/ it will automatically add the hashtag!  Just sign in, enter the chat, and you’re good to go.)

First Time Twitter Chat:

If you are new to Twitter chats, expect to take some time coming up to speed. The conversation happens FAST, and you may find yourself breathlessly trying to keep up at first. Don’t let that stop you – we all felt that way at first!

Here are some tips for beginners:

1) Review the archives of past chats to get a feel for what a Twitter chat is all about.  Just click on the “Archives” button in the navigation here, and check out any chat.  And remember, the chats are posted with the most recent comments at the top, so start from the bottom of the page and scroll up.

2) Use TweetChat to follow the chat.  Sign in using your Twitter name and password. Then type NPCons where it says “Enter Hashtag to Follow.” The result will be JUST a stream that is following the chat.  (The other benefit to Tweetchat is that you don’t have to remember to add the hashtag when you post a comment. Tweetchat automatically adds that for you!)

3) Know that following a Twitter chat is learning a new skill. When you first learned to drive a car, you wondered how you would possibly remember to watch everything at once; now you do it all without thinking.  We guarantee learning to follow a Twitter chat will take you less time than it took to become a good driver – but give yourself some time to get used to this new way of listening, learning and participating.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Many thanks to the wisdom of Jane Hart and the readers who comment at her blog, for so clearly articulating some of the great how-to here.  For more thoughts about how to learn from Twitter chats, this post and its comments are comprehensive and to-the-point. Thanks, Jane!