A funny thing happened on the way to the WEEC2011 forum…we got dragged (some kicking and screaming!) into the ever evolving world of social media.
With a particular aim of exploiting the collaborative power of social media in developing online communities of practice, the WEEC2011 local organising committee decided to integrate social media into the congress planning to engage stakeholders before, during and after the event. Now this is hardly a revolutionary concept since many conferences now use the power of social media in some way or another, but way back in the dim and distant past of the first organising committee meeting in 2009 it did seem a bit “out-there”.
So we set up a linked Twitter account (www.twitter.com/weec2011) and Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/WEEC2011-World-Environmental-Education-Congress/122270651132308) to see if we could develop a more extended congress experience and dipped our toes into the social media pond to see what would happen.
Well, it’s fair to say that it was slow to start and we got quite excited when we got our 50th Facebook “like”! There was also some disappointment when we realised that the plan to engage in “backchanneling” during the congress (a line of communication by a live audience with others inside and outside the event facilitated by web technologies) would probably be frustrated by the inadequacy of the WiFi facilities at the venue. But of course you can’t stop a geek that easily and with the help of some very keen volunteers the twitter stream #weec2011 started to take off! I think this was one of the first live congress tweets:
@livanon: #weec2011 volunteers setting up the grafitti wall in the exhibition hall. http://ow.ly/i/exRI
As word got around more #weec2011 tweeters came out of the woodwork with tweets that allowed other non-attendees to share the experience:
@justindillonkcl: Arts & sustainability from Lyndal O'Gorman: http://t.co/IcGeMeJ and http://t.co/j6DXtlP #weec2011
Before we knew it the congress was drawing to a close and Bruno (Maia – who was taking to the WECC2011 photos) and I decided to experiment with a “mashup” app called Twitterfountain to put together a multimedia display for the closing session. Bruno had been uploading the photos to Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/WEEC2011) and Twitterfountain put these together with the #weec2011 twitter stream. So probably the most amusing moment was when this tweet appeared on screen moments after it had been tweeted:
@Dcotton11: OMG! They're now showing conference photos and tweets in great hall 1. Twitter stream dominated by me and @JustinDillonKCL #weec2011
And still it didn’t stop. Almost as soon as WEEC2011 was over @brittgow tweeted with the #weec13 and the conversation between WEECs continues.
Recently there’s been a lot of criticism about the negative power of Twitter in organising the UK riots, but like every technology, it is a double-edged sword. As we found out at WEEC2011, it can also be used positively to facilitate online communities of practice and dynamic conversations. So if you haven’t already joined the Twitter phenomenon and you want to see what we're tweeting about…get thee a Twitter Handle now!
See you in cyberspace...
Hilary Macleod aka @geeekgrrrl
BTW the number of Facebook likes also continues to climb with over 500 “likes” to-date and if you want to see the Twitterfountain with the new #weec13 tweets, you can see it at http://thefounta.in/1A6mp
