Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping

Zen Peacekeeper Guide to Twitter: Expanding the conversation

A couple of weeks ago I started a series of short posts sharing what I know about Twitter.

If you missed them, you can read the previous posts:

• What is Twitter and how does it work?
• Ten easy steps to get started on Twitter
• Joining the conversation: Replies and Mentions

These Twitter posts will pop up once a week and although I have some ideas about the topics they'll cover, please feel free to leave a comment with any of your burning questions about Twitter.

Last week I shared my thoughts on joining the Twitter conversation, I'm continuing that theme this week but moving on to 'retweeting'.

Expanding the conversation: Retweeting

If someone tweets something that you think is so good you'd like to share with your own followers, then you are going to want to retweet it.

There are a few ways to retweet so pull up a chair and listen closely.

The first option is using the "Retweet" function built into Twitter. So let's say I look at my feed and see this lovely tweet from heatherplett (see below)

When I hover my cursor over her tweet the two options, 'Reply' and 'Retweet', appear. When I click on 'Retweet' a small dialogue box pops up checking that I really do want to retweet this to all my followers.

If I click on 'Yes' then Heather's tweet will appear in my Twitter stream exactly as it is, like this:

There is another option. I may want to retweet what Heather has said but add my own comment. In that case I can copy her tweet and paste it into my update box, at the letters RT to the front of her tweet so everyone know I'm retweeting her and then add what I want to say.

It gets confusing when you explain it, so here's another picture.

You can see Heather's tweet in my Twitter stream. Then I've copied it and put her Twitter name at the front, preceeded by the letters RT so everyone knows I'm quoting her. Finally I added my 2 cents worth at the beginning.

Some people, when they use this approach, put the RT and the Twitter name at the end of the Tweet. I don't think it matters where you put it as long as you give credit to the person you are quoting, and in that sense it's kind of like a reference in an essay.

By including their twitter name you'll also make sure that they see that you've retweeted them and that generally makes people feel loved so it's got to be a good thing. 

If you use a Twitter platform like Tweetdeck (which is what I use) then you may have other options for retweeting, but for simplicity's sake I'm going to leave it at that for this week.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Zen Peacekeeper Guide to Twitter: Join the conversation

Two weeks ago I started a series of short posts sharing what I know about Twitter.

If you missed them, you can read the previous posts:

• What is Twitter and how does it work?
• Ten easy steps to get started on Twitter

These Twitter posts will pop up once a week and although I have some ideas about the topics they'll cover, please feel free to leave a comment with any of your burning questions about Twitter.

Last week I shared my thoughts on getting started on Twitter, so now you have your profile, have chosen some people to follow and hopefully some of them are following you back. What next? Twitter is not just a series of millions of tiny billboards, it's a form of conversation. So, it's time to join the conversation.

Join the conversation

There are four main ways to join the Twitter conversation:

• replying;
• retweeting;
• direct messaging; and
• using hashtags.

I'm going to take these one at a time. Each is relatively simple but it can get overwhelming fast. So this week, let's look at 'replying' which is also known as 'mentioning'.

Replying

When you place the symbol @ before anyone's Twitter name in a Tweet, that tweet will show up in that person's feed, whether or not they are following you. There is a special feed in each person's Twitter account for all tweets that mention them. Here is a screen shot of mine:

As you can see, this is a great way of initiating conversation with someone you are following.

In fact the only reason I have that response from Chuck (who is someone every aspiring writer should be following, he is the King of agent advice) is because I responded to one of his Tweets, including his Twitter name preceded by the @ symbol so that it showed up in his stream. 

You can also see that while two of these Tweets are direct responses to something I had Tweeted, the third (from irenenam) is not a reply but a mention. She's talking about me, and Twitter makes sure I know about it.

As it happens I already know and love irenenam, so I'm already following her. But if I hadn't been, seeing this Tweet would have motivated me to go and check out her profile and, almost certainly, given how sweet this Tweet is, follow her.

So mentions are also a good way to connect with your 'right people' on Twitter.

A couple of final points about 'mentions' and 'replies' - which perhaps explain the difference between the two.

If you are replying directly to someone else then you are likely to put their twitter name (preceded by @) at the front of the Tweet, in fact if you use the "reply" button built into Twitter this is what it will do for you. These replies show up in the stream of the person they are directed towards and in the streams of anyone following both you and the person you have replied to, your other followers won't see them.

If you are "mentioning" someone, then it is likely that you'll place other words before their name, in this case the Tweet will appear in the feeds of all your followers.

To use the examples above, Chuck's tweet would only have shown up in my stream and the stream of anyone who was following us both. Irene's tweet will have gone out to all her followers.

Occasionally you'll see that someone has inserted a period before a reply, they do this so that the tweet appears in all of their followers feeds/streams, presumably because what they have to say to that one person is important enough for everyone else to read it to. Make sense?

Start a conversation with me!

If you read my blog and follow me on Twitter and I'm not following you, mentioning me or replying to me this way is a great way to let me know you are out there and would like to connect, by the way. I'm sure I'd love to connect with you too!

Have fun with that folks, and meet me back here next week to talk about retweeting.

Natural dignity of gentleness

Confidence brings the natural dignity of gentleness. You can afford to be gentle. You are not pretending to be gentle in order to achieve something by it, but you have a general sense of gentleness, which means you are being kind to yourself. Sometimes when the warrior feels doubtful about himself, he might have a problem being gentle to himself. Gentleness to yourself is necessary for a warrior; otherwise you find yourself puffed up, with no way to expand your vision to a great level at all. At that point, warriorship becomes pure bluff.

        Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
        From "Outrageousness," a talk given in July 1978 to Directors of             Shambhala Training
        via Oceans of Dharma quotes of the week

Top ten tips for Zen Peacekeepers No 1: How to learn a new language

1. Ask your colleagues to speak to you in their own language as much as possible.   
2. Slowly and sadly come to accept that you are not going to learn by osmosis.
3. Find a language teacher and arrange for him to come to your guesthouse for lessons.
4. Find a chaperone to join your lessons in order to protect your reputation (I asked a male colleague to join me in the lessons, he ended up becoming my boyfriend, I'm pretty sure that is not how chaperones are supposed to work).
5. Pay attention in your lessons and do your homework. But be careful not to pay too much attention or your teacher may think you fancy him and start getting you to repeatedly practice sentences like “I love my teacher”.
6. Listen to your colleagues as you all eat lunch together and pay attention to words and sounds that you hear often. Ask them what those words mean, or guess and ask them if you are right. You probably won’t be, but you might make them laugh.
7. Practice every chance you get, speak Dari to the cook (even if means only being able to ever ask for the same meal over and over again) and speak Dari to guards (but not too much, see tip 5).
8. Practice by running through verb tables with your driver in the morning (notice that he knows enough about verb tables to be considered well-educated in Afghanistan and wonder why this is the best job he can get).
9. Practice by talking to yourself (seriously, I do it all the time. See also “Top Tips for How to Survive Living Alone in the Middle of Nowhere”)
10. If in doubt, use an Arabic word. This might not work so well with French but there are plenty of them scattered through out Dari and even if it was not right, I found people thought it was pretty cool that a non-Muslim foreigner knew a little bit of the language of the Quran.  

[I'm planning to scatter these lists of "Top Tips for Zen Peacekeepers" through the book - as a way of talking about some themes in a more light-hearted style and in keeping with the idea of the book as a "manual" about the "art of peacekeeping"]