semester has ended

Our class is over, but for many of the students in fall 2007 Social Media class the journey in understanding social media has just begun!

In this class, we spent most of the semester creating student-selected social media projects then worked to make those projects a success. From marketing via Facebook to making good ole fashioned business cards & hitting the pavement, each student worked to increase viewership of his or her project.

Another major project involved students coming up with a proposal for an organization to integrate social media. The best of the best were covered on the blog so if you're ever looking for inspiration then check them out.

We provided extensive live coverage of the social media conference UGA Connect. Live blogging, twitter'ing, flickr'ing, podcasts & interviews. We did the same for the college's PRSSA chapter event, Professional Connection. Was there anything the students didn't do in sharing the on-site experience with the out-of-town observers?

And then there was the 48 hours of Twitter assignment that everyone loved! What fun!

Thanks to everyone who followed & interacted with this class - especially the professionals who did a "digital drop-in" for our "social media spotlite" series.

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For more information about UGA's Grady College, please visit http://www.grady.uga.edu .

To contact Dr. Kaye Sweetser, please visit her blog or faculty page.

support for UGA Connect

Today in class (no class-cast for this session - sorry!) we brainstormed ways to support the upcoming social media conference at Grady, UGA Connect. We talked about a common Flickr tag, a blog with podcasts & videos plus a wiki! We didn't mention Twitter ... but that is an option too.

Pre-conference ideas

• short podcast-like "on the street" interviews about social media (do you use it? how?)
• short podcast-like interviews with attendees of the Friday/Saturday night dinners
• tagged Flickr group coverage of Friday/Saturday dinners
• blog Friday dinner speech summary & open thread post
• blog post of Connect Campaigns Team survey results
  

Registration table & info

• collect everyone's URLs at the registration desk upon arrive
• take quick photos of each guest for the blog (if needed)
• create materials for the registration packet (info on SM projects, Flickr tagging info, etc.)

Conference main event coverage

• live blogging
• summary blog post of each session (including lunch & break out sessions)
• open thread post for each session
  
• podcast-like interviews with attendees
• tagged Flickr coverage throughout day
• short videos/interviews throughout day
• podcast entire audio for each session
• recap listing of sites named by panelists (panelist faves) for each session
• host wiki where attendees can collaborate on session summaries
  

We took a lot of inspiration from Josh Hallett at the weekend's BlogOrlando event and previous advice on what makes for good conference blogging.

Knowing that timing is everything, we would have the text posts uploaded by the end of the following session (at the latest). Dinner pictures & multimedia would be uploaded by 9 a.m. the following day (at the latest). We'll probably need a little more production time for the audio & video content, but will work to get it up as quickly as possible. The point here is to actually connect the content produced by all the attendees (pulling in their common tagged Flickr pics, Twitter tweets, etc.) & be a timely resource for those who couldn't make it to the conference.

Are we missing anything? Is this overkill? Feedback welcome!

PS - registration for the conference is open for another few days, so sign up before Monday!