I'm going to create some polls today to see what people would like to see in a chat. Please respond and share if you are interested in participating.
Day of the week? This is split into two polls since I'm only allowed 4 options.
Monday
22.2%
Tuesday
22.2%
Wednesday
11.1%
Thursday
44.4%
Poll ended at .
Day of the week? Continued
Friday
27.3%
Saturday
54.5%
Sunday
18.2%
Poll ended at .

Time of day?

(There's some bias here since I live in the Pacific Northwest and would like to participate.)

≈ 11 pm GMT
27.3%
≈ 5 am GMT
18.2%
≈ 11 am GMT
9.1%
≈ 5 pm GMT
45.5%
Poll ended at .
Google has some useful GMT to whatever-timezone-you-are-in calculators that may be useful for this last poll.

Style of chat?

Slow chat = Prompt posted, people have 24 hours to respond.
Live chat = Prompts posted, people respond as soon as they can, generally multiple prompts per session
Hybrid = Prompts posted, some people participate as live chat, some people participate as a slow chat.

Slow chat
20%
Live chat
10%
Hybdrid
70%
Poll ended at .
Topics? The wondering here is how much involvement from the community should there be in the topics discussed. Should a group of people decide? Should people post suggestions for topics each week? Do we want a host/moderator to decide on the topics?
Generated by the community
33.3%
Decided by a regular moderator
11.1%
Decided by a rotating host
55.6%
Poll ended at .

The polls are over. The sample size is small, but it's a starting point.

The results:
Topic: Most people would like a rotating host to decide on the topic, but some would like this topic to be generated by the community. This seems easy to compromise on.

Style of chat: A hybrid chat where some people participate in the live chat and other people post responses to prompts within a day or so seems the clear favourite.

Day & time: People prefer Saturday at 5 pm GMT (9 am PST)

Tomorrow is too soon, so let's try for next Saturday at 9 am PST.

Topic: TBD, but probably something around introductions.

#mathchat #mtbos #mathed #mathedchat #education #mathematics

@davidwees We could try a "dry run" tomorrow, testing using a.gup.pe as a "group 'bot" to see what happens. We can rope in a few people who contributed to that original discussion (which I can re-chart) and see how workable it seems, ahead of a major push to try to get people into a chat on Dec 3rd.
@ColinTheMathmo Great idea.
@davidwees @ColinTheMathmo Count me in. :-)

@karenshancock @davidwees We have this 'bot:

@mtbos

Mention it, and everyone who follows it gets a copy relayed to them.

We(*) may decide to use a different handle, but we can test this idea to see if it works.

(*) For some definition of "we".

Are we going to have a chat at 17:00 GMT? I have a puzzle people can work on, and we can talk about atopic for the inaugural (mostly) weekly #MTBoS #MathsChat ??

@karenshancock @davidwees @mtbos

@ColinTheMathmo @karenshancock @mtbos I'll try to join. I'm traveling this morning so I might be in and out of the chat.
@ColinTheMathmo @karenshancock @mtbos That's in about 30 minutes from now?

@davidwees Yes ... that was the time you were suggesting, was it not? Since it's just a few of us this time we can try for a coordinated time a little later.

Is there any time in the next 4 or 5 hours that would suit you?

@karenshancock @mtbos

@ColinTheMathmo @davidwees @mtbos
I'm around for the next 4 - 5 hours whenever suits,
@karenshancock @ColinTheMathmo @qmtbos I'm on the road now. What kinds of things do we want to test today? #mathed

Is there a reason you used "qmtbos" insteadof "mtbos" ?? I'm thinking it was probably a typo.

I think it's very much a case of seeing it the @mtbos label works to send things to everyone, so the first question is ...

Can you see this post?

I'm not mentioning you in the post, but I am mentioning the "Gup.pe" account.

I'll then reply to this post (in a few minutes) and mention you(pl) specifically.

So ... can you see this post?

@ColinTheMathmo @mtbos
Yes I can see it... I like the fact I can reply and if I forget the hashtag at the end the group is already copied in my reply! (I'm bad at remembering hashtags at the end!)

@karenshancock Super, so every follower of @mtbos should actually be able to see this conversation.

I think @davidwees' poll suggested a hybrid live/slow chat, with a live discussion happening at a given time, but people then able to add to the discussion over the next few days.

The next question is one of topics and hosts. My experience is that each on-line discussion needs someone to drive it, but also to allow people space to discuss.

Does anyone reading this have experience of this?

@ColinTheMathmo @karenshancock @mtbos Yeah the a thing was a typo. I don't know how, as I thought I just replied to you??

@davidwees

🤷‍♀️

No problem.

@karenshancock @mtbos