DEEP GREEN SEA: One of Puerto Rico’s biggest assets is its gorgeous tropi- cal climate — exemplified by the Ocean Course, one of two golf courses at Wyndham Rio Mar Beach Resort & Spa. For more information, see p. 17.
PLENARY
A Music Festival Inspires a Campaign for the World’s First Twitter- Demanded Flight
HEN KLM ROYAL DUTCH AIRLINES ANNOUNCED LAST fall via Twitter that it was adding direct service between Amsterdam and Miami to its schedule beginning
next month, it got a response — also via Twitter — from prominent members of the Dutch electronic-dance community.
To paraphrase tweets by producer and DJ Sied Van Riel and video
producer Wilco Jung: “Great, but that’s a bit too late.” The problem for Van Riel, Jung, and the rest of their circle was that
KLM’s first direct Amsterdam-to-Miami flight was scheduled for March 27, just missing the start of alternative-music events scheduled that month, including the Ultra Music Festival, which begins March 25. Amid much Twitter-fueled joking, in early November, Jung tweeted to KLM and the online Dutch electronic-dance community: “I bet we could fill a 250-person plane of house music dutchies … can’t we lease one? hahaha.” The digital banter turned into something more substantial, however, when it occurred to Martijn van der Zee, KLM’s vice president for e- commerce, that filling a Miami-bound plane with music fans was actually possible. Van Riel and Jung both have a lot of influence — and many thousands of Twitter followers — in the Dutch music community. “One interesting thing about social media,” van der Zee said in a phone inter- view, “is that you can check and see if people are for real.” Van der Zee went to the airline with the idea. KLM liked it, and offered to add a special flight — provided the dance community could guarantee 150 passengers within a week to 10 days. Jung and Van Riel seized the challenge. They created a website, www.fly2miami.nl, where potential passengers could register, and spread the word about the flight through online dance magazines, radio stations, and, of course, Twitter.
continued on page 19 www.pcma.org pcma convene February 2011 13 +
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