Those of you who share my appreciation of the peak of Western civilisation that is Twitter may have come across a series of accounts that represent a given country, with one citizen of that country taking over the account each week. I believe this trend started in Sweden, where the idea was actually initiated by the government and Stephen Colbert promptly tried to get in on the act as an honorary Swede, or “artificial Swedener”, as he put it*; this week’s curator, Steffan, has been absolutely brilliant, and his ongoing verbal battle with the corresponding (although not government-affiliated) Canadian account drew my attention to the fact that hey, look – Canada has a corresponding (although not government-affiliated) account!**
I applied immediately, of course, and have been selected as the Person of Canada for the week of January 21st-27th! My profile just went up on the website, and I’m just waiting for the account login information to be handed over tonight or tomorrow morning. This is all very exciting, and the timing is perfect – I’m sure that interest in my work is going to be extremely limited even though I’m going to a presentation about a new funding opportunity tomorrow, so I won’t tweet about that unless asked, but I have a really fun week of non-work events planned: I’m going to the Canucks-Flames game on Wednesday; a live story-telling event on Friday; snowshoeing (possibly, depending on friends) on Saturday morning; and a Burns Night supper on Saturday night.
You don’t even need a Twitter account to follow along – although, as with everything else, it’ll be much more fun if you do!
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*he was unsuccessful. The title of this post is my official tribute fart in his general direction.
**lots of other countries do, too – check out the #rotationcuration hashtag for the latest shenanigans.
Being a curator in November was a blast for me – I’m sure you’ll have just as much fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing your tweets next week!
Oh, *awesome*, Cath! Have fun!
Thanks both – I’m very excited!
I just got handed the keys to the account a little earlier than expected, and am currently alienating the entire city of Edmonton. Go Canucks!
Go Canada, go Cath!
Does Quebec has its own twitter-account? Does it count if I say I might possibly find a job in Quebec in answer to your question whether I am moving to Canada anytime soon?
So, while you’re tweeting out there for Canada and the greater good, can you miraculously get more funding for soil science??
Wouldn’t be easier, and kinder, just to use a pair of snowshoes?
In other news, “twinternational” (c) sounds orsome! Y’know, if I gave a rat’s fart about twitter. But mad props to you. I would like to encourage you to tweet about your meeting though – show people around the world that science is important and Canadia is doing good science.
I am Canada, and so is my wife.
Nina, ooh, that’s exciting! Bon chance! I might have to wait until I’m the Minister for Science before I can help you with the soil, though.
Mike, I really don’t think the meeting will be a good choice – even I’m not all that interested in it to be honest, but I’m the member of my team responsible for keeping up to date with this particular funding agency so I will go, take notes, and report back. I’d usually be more interested, but this particular funding competition just barely overlaps with our institution’s research, so there’s unlikely to be much interest in it from our PIs. But I do have a couple of ideas of how to get some sneaky science into this week’s tweets!
Ooh, I hope this week holds lots of juicy Canadian news for you to tweet about, like a maple syrup heist or a well-dressed monkey walking into Ikea!
Well, the whole “the maple leaf on the new $20 bill is Norwegian, not Canadian!” story was last week, but I still got in on the action.
Norway has retaliated with a goat cheese fire, which is hard to beat, really.