On Social Media for Events

How do you use social media in conjunction with events, whether “live and in person” or online? The upcoming Twitter Moot always impresses me in how they have redefined an in-person event for the virtual space, holding the actual moot online–and publicly!–so that others can follow along and even participate. It changes the whole dynamic of the event.

How else can social media be used in conjunction with events–to plan them, promote them, engage people at the event or people just observing, how to “capture” or record the event, and how to allow everyone to learn from the event? Daniel Lee and I are exploring this question this week with our Social Media Tools and Tactics class (a University of Toronto iSchool Institute online course). And to make this oh so very “meta”, we are doing it publicly as a Twitter chat event starting today until Friday, December 13th. You can follow along and join in by monitoring the program’s hashtag #smp4orgs (“social media for organizations”) on Twitter.

In the law world I see a nice amount of tweeting happening around law and technology or knowledge management conferences. On the volunteer side, Toronto’s PR and tech community come together each year to run HoHoTO, a party born on Twitter several years ago, to raise funds for Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank. The event is promoted on Twitter and in person there is typically a “Twitter wall” where everyone can see each other’s tweets projected onto a large screen. Raffle prizes are announced via Twitter, and in past years there has even been a “hangover auction” of unclaimed raffle prizes conducted via Twitter a day or two after the big event. Plus lots of dancing and general partying, of course.

I’m curious to know what else is happening? What are your favourite events held in conjunction with social media? Are you seeing other examples in the legal industry? What tools are you using to “capture” the event?