comments
Olympic Games, Social Media, and Events I’ve enjoyed reading Convene’s many examples of events that have integrated social-media tools. The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in my home city demonstrated that this is not a passing fad — and as someone who has worked in both the events industry and the media industry for the past 15 years, I was particularly interested in seeing how the Games’ social-media initiatives played out. Around 9.66 million tweets were sent
during the Olympic opening ceremony; that’s more than during the whole of the 2008 Games in Beijing. Outside of the opening ceremony, the rest of the Games picked up a further 15 million “fans” across their social-media platforms, and saw five billion-plus tweets — in excess
of 100 times more than four years ago. As an industry, we should celebrate
how this one event was able to ignite an audience on a global scale. We saw the BBC activate 24 channels of live sports, each with expert opinion and insight. More than 30,000 members of the media came to the U.K. to cover the Games, 8,500 of whom were non- accredited in the London Media Centre, where our Davies Tanner team was largely based. We saw two outstanding apps: “2012
Results” broke down all the sports, competitors, medal tables, results, and news stories, and was updated continu- ally, 24 hours a day; and “Join In” was committed to social media and encour- aged interaction with the Games, the people, the festivals, the cultural Olym- piad, and much more.
All very impressive, but what does it
mean? Simple. Nothing makes people interact and talk like events. From our perspective as a media organiza- tion specializing in the meetings and events industry, we saw irrevocable evidence of the power of events — and as an industry, we should point to the Games as a macro demonstration of what this industry does on a smaller scale every day, around the world. No other medium can have this effect both live and connected digitally and socially. Events work, and the world saw it again in 2012.
Alistair Turner, PR Director, Davies Tanner
Editor’s Note: Davies Tanner (daviestanner .com) serves as PCMA’s public relations firm in Europe.
From Convene’s blog For more on the meetings industry, visit our blog at
pcmaconvene.com.
WISE IN THE WAYS OF MEETING Senior Editor Barbara Palmer writes about Wisdom 2.0, a conference that explores the intersection of wisdom, technology, and neuroscience, which launched in 2010: “I particularly liked how founder
Soren Gordhamer jumped in with both feet from the beginning — the first conference webcast several sessions and fearlessly mixed Buddhist monks and academics with Silicon Valley’s high-flying tech entrepreneurs. “The conference sold out both
years, and was such a hot ticket last year that Premal Shah, president of Kiva, got in the door only by accept- ing Gordhamer’s invitation to be a panelist. (Convene wrote briefly about Wisdom 2.0 in a sidebar to the
‘Focus Group’ story about medita- tion and meetings in our June 2011 issue [
convn.org/medita-mtgs].)
Gordhamer, who has co-organized a conference with the Dalai Lama, is an original thinker. So I am paying attention as he experiments with the design of the 2013 conference, to be held next February in San Francisco (
wisdom2summit.com). Like many other conference organizers, Wisdom 2.0 is seeking to improve traditional formats without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Earlier this summer, Gordhamer wrote: “‘While people enjoy quality content,
and know there is a value in hearing someone live, instead of via a screen, we are also adapting our conference to include more interactive sections. ‘Instead of a one-way street, with
the speaker talking to participants, we are working to develop several paths, including: quality content from a stage, ways to connect with others on shared interests, practices that help us apply teachings, and options in how people spend their time.’ “That sounds very much like what I am hearing from meeting planners
Panelists at 2011 Wisdom 2.0.
from a wide range of disciplines and organizations. In fact, getting that mix right seems to me to be the Holy Grail in the conference world right now. Please chime in if you know of other interesting conferences that are reinventing themselves.”
Watch a YouTube video of Soren Gordhamer discussing the format for Wisdom 2.0 2013 at
convn.org/wis-intro.
PCMA.ORG
OCTOBER 2012 PCMA CONVENE
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PHOTOGRAPH BY MARI SMITH
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