The 2013 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences was a huge success in terms of online engagement between attendees, the Federation, and our hosts at the University of Victoria. One of our key social media platforms was Twitter, and the #congress2013 hashtag became a valuable place to connect, share information, and discuss the ideas so abundant during the week. From June 1-8 we measured 7,600 tweets using #congress2013, and about 1,600 of those took place in just one day!

To visit #congress2013 now, however, is a different story. Currently, and even during Congress, the feed is also occupied by tweets about different events that use the same hashtag, as well as angry rants about US politics. The same applies for #congress2012, and every future Congress if we were to continue using this format. All these other tweets can make it difficult to find the information you want, and can make it harder for us to respond to your comments and questions in a timely manner. So we have an idea:

Let’s adopt a unique hashtag to represent the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences – one that won’t change from year to year, is unlikely to be used by anyone else, and is bilingual. Here’s our plan:

#congreSSH

Okay, ssh, let us explain. The two “S”s at the end of Congress become the start of an acronym for Social Sciences and Humanities. And since Twitter is not case sensitive, it works in French as well:

#congresSH (Congrès des sciences humaines)

Plus, without including the year, this hashtag uses up a smaller number of those precious 140 characters! And there will be no more confusion over whether it’s #congress2014 or #congress14. 

We’ll have a place on Twitter that’s dedicated to our own discussions. Somewhere bilingual, and available all year round.

Let us know what you think by sending us a tweet at @ideas_idees.

Congress 2014 will take place at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario from May 24-30, 2014.