Both Environmental Gateway and its 'academic' sister site, Transdisciplinary Gateway share an interactive user forum: Transforum .  Transforum is the place where users (anyone who elects to register for access -like everything else to do with Environmental Gateway and Transdisciplinary Gateway; all for free) can interact and contribute to discussion on topics of interest.  Transforum is intended to support 'deeper' levels of debate and was designed as a kind of 'tea room' for that group who were dispossessed from the University of New England, Australia, following an unfortunate and demoniacal restructuring process. But this is a tea room for everyone who is interested in more detailed discussions; it's a learning forum; a forum of exchange. 

With Transforum set up and running, we still needed a kind of 'window' or notice board to summarise and extend the discussions from within. The social networking phenonemon of Twitter offers precisely that service.  So, your administrator has set up a Twitter space for Transforum and you are invited to 'follow' and contribute to that very abbreviated conversation.  You will notice that Transforum Twitter updates are also posted right on the front page of both the Environmental Gateway and Transdisciplinary Gateway sites.  

Twitter is a free social networking service to which anyone can subscribe and contribute. Posts are limited to 140 characters.  It's a bit like MSN or even text messaging. Except that you can access and post messages from your web browser, dedicated Twitter feed software or even your mobile phone. The easiest solution is to simply visit Twitter.com and sign up.  You can read and write messages right from your web browser once you log on. Or you can download special software like Twitteriffic or Twhirl which both provide some additional control over how you interact with your Twitter feeds.  Once you are set up, you are encouraged to then search for and 'follow' Transforum (www.twitter.com/transforum ). Of course, you can add other Twitter feeds to follow as well; tens, hundreds or thousands of other feeds.  You can also post messages, ideas or concise inspirations as much as you like.  Those who elect to follow you will then receive your 'tweets'. Twitter folk can interact through replying to individual posts or direct messaging (a kind of email service limited to 140 characters).  You need to launch to really get a feel for how all this works and the first step is to visit Twitter.com.  Use the search bar to enter topics that interst you (like, say, 'sustainability'). You will then be presented with a list of 'Twitter people' who have included the word you searched for in their bio details (everyone who put the word 'sustainability'  in their bio line). You can then decide to follow people from this list (you can see each person's string of recent posts and decide if you are interested in what that person has to say and want to 'follow' their 'tweets' - you can 'unfollow' at any time if you like).