UPDATE: The 3rd #MeetUpMondays was great - each week more people are participating, and coming back every week. Join us, nonstop Mondays.
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How to Host a #MeetUpMondays Chat
The IMAXI Cooperative is bringing together some good people to build a new tool for global or local health. Every Monday, we are organising multiple non-stop 24hour discussions (chats) on topics chosen by dozens of guest hosts (moderators) via Twitter and SMS text. This allows people living with diseases, advocates, activists, experts and health professionals to choose a topic, and encourage diverse people to share on this issue. It provides a platform for all to express themselves in a friendly environment at a convenient time from anywhere in the world. The IMAXI Coop has done a dozen or so of these Online/SMS events as trials over the last year to learn how they can work best. Some were linked to High-Level UN Meetings (WHA, HIV, NCDs, SDOH) and others, like these, under a more general theme. Now, we're applying some lessons learned, while continuing to learn while doing,

Have a Health issue to raise? Bring it to #MeetUpMondays
The first series of MeetUpMondays are under the banner of Human Rights, in the build up to Human Rights Day on 10 December. Afterwards, we will continue this initiative, and grow the participation of these weekly Monday Meet-Ups. In the new year, we hope to offer other languages as well. We see this as a way to collectively build an open system that will lead to the greater involvement of many more people from diverse communities, and offer a tool for accountability for the previously voiceless. Meanwhile, we've some more learning and constructing to do over the next months, and we're looking for a few good brains to lend a hand. (read more...)

Hosting is easy. The aim is to spark a conversation, while pointing a friendly finger towards further information.
It requires choosing a topic, with a title in question format, and preparing some tweets (approx. 120 characters) in advance. Each tweet should include the focus hashtag, such as #HIV_chat or #NCDchat or #PALLIchat or #SDOHchat, etc.
1. Welcome to all and brief intro;
2. Three topical questions, one of which that you tweet every ten minutes or so;
3. Two or three tweets with bit links to reference materials;
4. A "Final thoughts?" tweet towards the end, and one more to thank everyone for participating.

During the session, IMAXI Cooperative's role is to RT and SMS many of the tweets from our different accounts and Coop members. We try to get more people to follow the discussion, and to follow you. If there are enough participants, the session moves at a fast pace and requires no stimulus or interventions by the host. For those with many followers, there is the basis of good participation. For those Hosts with fewer followers, the pre-chat promotion is important. Once we get your title question, we begin to promote it across our little network of twitter accounts and SMS users. Each 'marathon' seems to be getting much better, and so far the hosts and most people are happy to participate again. Afterwards, we also provide transcripts of the sessions with analysis.

Monday not good? Try 'Remote-Host Service' for #MeetUpMondays
After you have experienced hosting a session as above, we can then offer our 'Remote-Host Service' to maximise your convenience in the future. This is the same as steps 1-4 above, but you don't have to be online for the session. You simply prepare all the tweets in advance and send it to us. We will then 'Co-Host' the session using your tweets, and adding your @name to each. Afterwards, you can read the transcript and add to the ongoing conversation whenever you want.

We hope this makes some sense, and that you will lend a brain and host a session on a Monday. More background here: http://www.imaxi.org/content/meet-mondays-towards-healthy-human-rights-day