For passionate supporters of free open access medical education, #ACEP17 provides an abundance of clinical and practice pearls that can enhance your time here at the ACEP annual meeting.

Can’t be in three places at once? That’s what the ACEP official Social Media Team is for—and of course the thousands of unofficial supporters who join us online. With all the live-tweeting of great lectures and discussions by some of your favorite ACEP faculty members, choosing between courses isn’t quite as difficult as it used to be. It’s almost like you can, in fact, be in more than one place at the same time.

Live-tweeting has become a staple of medical conferences, and with it has come some maturity. There appears to be a shift away from pure stenography. Sure, for those who could not attend, it’s nice to have some tweets that tell us what Dr. Corey Slovis just said. But as twitter expert Dr. Liam Yore (@movinmeat) recently summarized in a tweetstorm (ie, a series of pre-planned tweets on a single topic, sent out in short succession; a bolus of tweets, if you will), most people on twitter want more than a verbatim transcript of what a speaker said.

Often a useful conference tweet adds the tweeter’s own opinion. Or it poses a question to the twitterverse. Of course, great pictures are always appreciated, if the speaker agrees to it. Dr. Tim Horeczko (@EMtogether) sent me his slides ahead of time for this purpose alone because I planned to live-tweet his talk and wanted a head-start with high quality images.

Dr. Sandy Simons tweeted from Dr. Andrew Perron’s update on concussions, “Concussions and CTE? There is not a linear relationship between # of concussions and CTE risk. (Sports mom in me says ‘Phew!’). A closer look at the image of the slide she attached to the tweet suggests a connection between chronic traumatic encephalopathy and concussions, but that the relationship is neither linear nor predictable.

Dr. Justin Hensley (@EBMgonewild) provided a slew of excellent pearls, tweeting from Dr. Jennifer Walthall’s talk “ALTE/BRUE: Can This Kid Go Home?” His ability to pack in the pearls shows this isn’t his first Twitter rodeo. Turns out that, We will miss epilepsy in ALTE/BRUE workup. Ten percent present as this. Outcomes are ok, so missing it is not harmful.͟ I’m exhausted just reading that tweet. It wasn’t just a pearl, it was an entire three-act play!

New to Twitter and don’t know what to do? Check out @ACEPNow and follow accounts that they follow. From there, you’ll find great EM educators who will fill your feed with high quality EM pearls. You can also search for tweets that contain #ACEP17—the conference hashtag. With about 5,000 tweets per day coming out of ACEP17, you’ll have plenty to read!