It seemed like everyone in the tourism industry was in NOLA for #DMAI11 last month. Well everyone except for a few lonely people on twitter who felt like they were missing out. What started as a playful conversation became an incredible occasion to connect with other tourism professionals on twitter.
Troy (@travel2dot0) mentioned the #notatDMAI11 hashtag in a tweet and a few of us started to run with it. While the real #DMAI11 conference attendees listened to Dom Sagolla speak, one of the co-creaters of Twitter, we had some random tweets like my “Twitter has 140 characters. #notatDMAI11” tweet. But the non-conference hashtag was quickly evolving into something more than that and within less than an hour, we had a #notatDMAI11 twitter list and a non-conference non-logo logo, courtesy of Beth Conway.
Next came the idea of hosting a #notatDMAI11 twitter chat. It was the perfect opportunity to show the community aspect of hashtags and the learning potential of twitter, with or without a conference. The chat was scheduled for that Friday, the last day of #DMAI11, and focused on using social media at conferences. For more info on the chat, check out the #notatDMAI11 twitter transcript [pdf]. By the end of the chat, only three days after the hashtag was created, there were over 270 #notatDMAI11 tweets by more than 50 twitter accounts.
Social media moves quickly. Twitter moves even faster. You have to be on your feet and ready to run with it.
Troy @ Travel 2.0
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