I recently presented at #SoMeT12 – a symposium about Social Media in the Tourism industry – held in El Paso, Texas.
On November 8, 2012 a day after the US election, plenty of stories and hugs were passed around to the delegates representing many countries, regions, cities and so on. It was great to connect with everyone and talk tourism and social media, plus enjoy some Tex-Mex food and a wee splash of sunshine in a historic park.
Read on for some fun highlights of my visit:
Mikala Taylor wrote a detailed re-cap of my talk – here’s an excerpt to set the stage:
One of these kids was doing his own thing: and at SoMeT12 that kid was HootSuite’s VP of Community, Dave Olson. Dressed in a burgundy jacket and sporting impressive mutton chops, Olson woke the bleary crowd at 8:30am with an energetic talk about sparking conversations, and how to create a social media journey.“I’ve been to destinations”, he joked at the tourism crowd, before reminding everyone that travel really is just about “making friends and sharing stories.” “Five years from now,” he said, “the tools will be totally different…Social media is just a weird term of convenience. It’s just about listening.”
Click here for the full article, HootSuite’s Dave Olson: “Social Media is a weird term of convenience. It’s just about listening”
Slides
Here is the slide deck I used during my talk made up of both personal and professional anecdotes including my experiences hitchhiking around Europe, Japan and elsewhere:
[slideshare id=15057848&doc=socialmediatourism-121106191337-phpapp01]
Bonus: Check out more DaveO presentations
Photo Gallery
With an audience of social media enthusiasts, no doubt the tweets and photos flowed on, catch a few below or more at Clemens Schuster’s Flickr Stream (who travelled all the way from Austria for the event):
Photo courtesy of SoMeT12
Snapshots
I also took a few snaps while out on a walk around town plus a visit to the Hoppy Monk bar on the Mexican border, out for a few tasty meals, and glances at various pawn shops and parks.
See, my tiny old hard shell suitcase with stickers all over it. I don’t travel without it!
Here’s my suitcase and Owly.
Photo courtesy of @vlpmeriposa
Check out Toque and Canoe’s feature, In the Suitcase with Dave Olson, for my packing secrets.
Visit my flickr set, El Paso Mission, for more photos.
A couple of highlights I enjoyed most were handing out some mad HootSwag and asking the social media savvy audience to tweet my mom (@manorbrooks) during my presentation.
Social artifact roundup with more tweets, blogs etc (some redundancy)
Audio Dispatch
After the conference, I sat down with Catherine Heeg (@catherineheeg) of Customized Management Solutions to talk about the #SoMeT12 conference and HootSuite’s features (we caught up at the airport of all places, and were briefly interrupted by the PA system as you’ll hear in the interview). Read the interview recap at Catherine’s Customized Management Solutions Blog and the interview with Catherine Heeg in podcasty goodness.