The Annual Convention & Exhibition in Denver is almost upon us, and Twitter makes it easy for those who will be attending – and those who will not – to follow what’s happening.

An official Twitter hashtag has been designated for this year’s Annual Convention: #aapgdenver09.

What’s a hashtag?

Hashtags are a way of tagging Twitter posts to give them context within the greater conversation. These keywords are added to tweets (Twitter posts) preceded by a # (hash symbol), hence the name “hashtag.”

Hashtags help you find and follow conversations that matter

As with any tagging or indexing system, hashtags can provide useful context, as well as increased utility for tracking. Hashtags were popularized during the San Diego forest fires in 2007 when Nate Ritter used the hashtag “#sandiegofire” to identify his updates related to the disaster.

Now people use hashtags to track everything from reactions to television shows to sporting events to election results. Conference attendees use agreed-upon hashtags to post updates about the event. It’s a great way to organize news, reactions to sessions and presentations, social events, and more.

Following hashtags can lead to connections with others who are tweeting about the same event or topic - a great networking tool!

Make hashtags work for you

The easiest way to track a hashtag is to use Twitter’s built-in search function and search on your desired hashtag. For Denver, this is #aapgdenver09. Other services that aid in following hashtags include the powerful Twitter application TweetDeck, hashtags.org, which shows useful graphs of popularity and recency of hashtags, or Twemes, which offers real-time tracking without the necessity of following a specific Twitter account.

Use any of these utilities to track what others are saying using #aapgdenver09.

And when you tweet your own Denver news, thoughts, or plans, be sure to use the #aapgdenver09 hashtag!

Watch Twitter for updates from Denver from the official AAPG twitter (@aapg), Conventions (@AAPG_Denver09), Students (@AAPGStudents), and of course me (@jedfordaapg)!