On Saturday, The Finnish Association of Non-Fiction Writers held a social media course at the House of Science. Before the course, participants were asked to create a Twitter profile for themselves. We wanted to give these new tweeps a hands-on experience, so at the end of the day we organized a Twitter chat. The idea is familiar to and frequently used by e-learning professionals, but this was the first time I tried it in a course with Twitter novices. Many groups hesitate to test the waters of a fast-paced public Twitter stream, but non-fiction writers are competent, self-directed people; they didn’t hold back. The result? Many responses (Storify summary, in Finnish) to the chat’s questions, along with lots of retweets and favorites. It worked so well that I think I’ll make chat a permanent part of my other Twitter courses. In fact, I think this technique is even better suited to training than to open discussions, where the number of participants, especially those tweeting in Finnish, is small and the steam often fails to reach critical mass.