After close to a year of planning, the 2007 TLT Symposium kicks off tonight with a dinner for invited guests. Tomorrow things kick into high gear and before we know it, it will all be over — and planning will start for 2008.
I just wanted to throw a quick post up here to point out that we’ve worked really hard to make sure the Symposium walked the talk this year. My colleague, Allan Gyorke was in charge of this year’s event and his use of Web 2.0 tools in the planning and execution of the event is well documented over at the Symposium site. I think it is very cool that we were able to build on what we learned last year and have exposed the power of these tools to support the planning of a massive event.
From Flickr, Moo Cards, BaseCamp, Drupal, to Twitter and Google Docs the whole thing has been supported by some very powerful tools. Just the way we approved the marketing materials and tracked the events leading up to the big day using Flickr was amazing … I’m sure those stories will get told as posts or podcasts at the Symposium site as well. Speaking of that, all attendees will be able to blog and share thoughts during the event just like last year. Should be interesting and will hopefully provide a place for the conversation to continue.
I think this is even more proof that social tools have a place in the organization on so many levels. I am curious about other stories of people using these tools to support events or activities in their world.
Last year for our Memorial day/house warming party we used blogger and flickr to communicate and share with folks. It was a big hit, particularly for family & friends who weren’t too familiar with either. Now this year, Sue’s high school reunion committee is us a blog in combination with classmates.com to promote the event, find individuals, and generally get folks involved.
From a work-related slant, we moved the TLA’s to using Drupal to communicate. Next year we’re going to employ Twitter, and perhaps something like MySpace or Facebook to create something like a consulting ‘portfolio.’ (This last idea is still very nebulous.