I have been on Twitter now for about a year or so. At first I didn't get it, and it was actually pretty annoying. But, much to my surprise, today I really enjoy it. I check through my tweets pretty regularly and use it to keep in touch with people from all over the world. Fantastic little medium. Anyway, I have recently figured out that I am not the only reliability professional using Twitter! So now I can keep up with part of my asset management network on Twitter.
Here is a list of a few of them that I am aware of. Feel free to leave your own address here if I miss you.
Of course, you can follow me @ReliableSuccess, or if you are the consulting field I can be found under my own name at @DarylMather.
Paul Marshall - CEO of Ivara. I love that this guy is doing this. Real open and transparent. I think that's fantastic.
Howard Penrose - The irrepressible MotorDoc, haunter of forums, writer and undeniable expert in the field of motor management and beyond.
Ivara - The blog of the company, great broadcasts from their blog.
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers - Not sure who is running this, but they tweet regularly.
The ThinkReliability guys are here - not very social; more broadcasting.
Joel Leonard - My reliability hero. If you haven't seen the SkillTV stuff yet, then you need to visit www.skilltv.net and his his blog at http://skilltvtechnutia.blogspot.com/.
IndustryWeek - Another broadcasting account, but also with great content.
iSolutionsAMT a company I had some dealings with in Australia for a while. Also here.
Doug Plucknette founder of RCM Blitz and another RCM dude. For reasons that escape me, Doug has protected his tweets. But if enough of us try to follow him, he will have to join in the conversation.
SAMICorp is here also; again lots of broadcasts.
Larry Johnson of Fractal Solutions runs a pretty interesting tweet timeline
Plant Services runs a very interactive tweet timeline. More than broadcasts and into the social networking side of things. Run by Lisa Towers, managing editor of digital media.
The author of LeanBlog, a cool blog by Mr Mark Graban.
Terry Wireman contributes and seems to be starting to enjoy himself on Twitter a bit.
Terrence O'Hanlon - Reliability internet pioneer (ReliabilityWeb) and one of the masters of community runs a very interesting and interactive timeline.
Ricky Smith - The ubiquitous pied piper of reliability. I had absolutely no doubt that I would find Ricky here. And his timeline is very personal, interactive, as well as being informative.
I'm sorry if I missed anyone who is following me. I will run the list again in a couple of months to see if our Twitter group has grown any.
If you are new to Twitter, here are a few quick suggestions:
Don't look into the Public Timeline - it will send you blind!
Fill a page with some random tweets before starting to follow anyone. Links from around the internet, articles, interesting stuff, etcetera. (An empty timeline often means a robot or a spammer.)
Follow people like those here first, check out who they are following and follow them.
Use http://search.twitter.com to find people who are talking about stuff that interests you. Then follow them. (They might follow back if your timeline is interesting.)
Download TweetDeck. It is a great little application that allows you to create groups. For example, I have a group of people on Reliability, a group for marketers, a group for consultants and so on. (Even one for authors which is a really off-the-wall group.)
Learn how to reply to people and actually involve yourself in conversations. It is best when it isn't a passive medium, and it is best when you don't just try to use it like your personal broadcast channel.
Have fun with it, there seems to be a lot of us on there now.
You can network with other reliability practitioners here, and see the latest in reliability jobs here.