Twitter: ALD 2017 conference account added to the ALD Glossary

The ALD Glossary page of ALD History Blog has been updated with info of the new Twitter account related to next year's ALD 2017 conference in Denver, Colorado, USA.

ALD conference Twitter accounts: 

• ALD 2014: @ALD_2014
• ALD 2016: @ALD2016_Ireland
• ALD 2017: @AvsALD 

More on #ALDep and Twitter:

• Advice for new Twitter users in a separate post here. 
• Most recent Twitter news is that anyone can ask to verify your account - this feature has earlier been open on invitation only. I have today asked to verify mine - let's see what the answer will be.

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Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) - in atmosphere of Openness, Respect, and Trust

VPHA status update 15.8.2016

The VPHA status update below was sent by email to 71 VPHA co-authors and 31 prospective co-authors. More volunteers are still welcome to join the VPHA reading & commenting effort. 

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 Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

Much has happened regarding the understanding of the early history of ALD in the last two months since the previous general VPHA status update on May 16 --- you can access earlier VPHA status updates here. We are now starting active preparations for the next steps, so it is a good time to review the progress made so far.

Below, you find and update on the following topics:

• VPHA poster at ALD 2016, with results of VPHA voting
• Next step: VPHA reading, 3rd commenting round to come
• Next step: Letter/article to JVSTA special issue (DL September 6)
• Invited plenary talk by Prof. Anatoly Malygin at ALD 2016
• ALD Innovation Prize at ALD 2016 to Dr. Suvi Haukka, ASM, Finland
• Recent ALD-related advances in Wikipedia (#WikiALD)
• About an increased Twitter activity related to (#ALDep)
• VPHA ALD thesis list with >300 entries, many missing still?
• New in ALD History Blog: ALD Glossary
• Other ALD History Blog posts

New page in ALD History Blog: ALD Glossary

July 30, 2016, a new page has been created in ALD History Blog: ALD glossary: abbreviations and Twitter. While I have been thinking of setting up this page for a long time, the rapidly increasing use of Twitter in the ALD community and the recognition of the "best tweet" at ALD 2016 made the need immediate. The glossary lists (link) are not final but just a start; comments and suggestions for improvements are welcome.

For the Twitter hashtag list, I tried to trace back and describe there the first use of the hashtags. Sometimes, this was easy as the hashtag is uniquely used for ALD (#ALDep, #BalticALD, #FinALD40, ...); sometimes, this is more difficult as the hashtag is in multiple use in Twitter (e.g., #ALD2015, #ALD16, #ALD2016, #VPHA). In Twitter, no-one "owns" a hashtag and anyone can start using whatever they like, also one that is already in use. Twitter is by its nature chaotic; good hashtags are keywords which help to navigate through the chaos.