Twitter | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Tweetcamp III – Reserve Your Spot

On Monday, July 13 from 2-3 p.m. CDT I will be presenting Tweetcamp III (Twitter hashtag #tweetcamp3) as a training session for Mayo Clinic employees.

You are invited to join remotely. I’ll have details on that in a bit. But meanwhile, here is background on the agenda:

General principles of social media
1. The Dinner Party Rule vs. The Law of Large Numbers
2. How to avoid being “That Guy”
3. Be real and transparent
4. Give more than you take
5. Integrity
6. Mayo Clinic Employee Guidelines
Understanding Twitter
1. Why does it matter?
2. How is it different from Facebook, email, long-format blogs and other forms of electronic communication?
3. So what can you say in 140 characters anyway?
Case studies that show Twitter’s potential, or “A Series of Serendipitous Events”
1. Listening and connecting
2. Real-life meetings
3. How Twitter has contributed to Mayo Clinic’s reputation
4. Journalist interactions and media stories
5. Blogger interactions and resulting posts
How to Tweet Productively – it’s not an oxymoron
1. Understanding #hashtags
2. Twitter etiquette and building “Tweet cred”
3. Using Twitter with Yammer
4. The Twitter API
5. Twitter applications for desktop and mobile
6. Finding “Tweeps”
Assignments and Extra Credit

As we have done with previous Tweetcamps, #tweetcamp3 will be open to participation from outside of Mayo. If you would like to join via Webinar, please leave a comment with your name, city and location below. Here’s why:

Leaving your comment here helps to demonstrate the worldwide community connection potential of Twitter. Part of what we do in Tweetcamp is show how practical Twitter is for bringing a community of interest together on short notice. I will be asking people to introduce themselves at the beginning of #Tweetcamp3, but by leaving a blog comment it’s more of a permanent record to which we can refer.

By leaving your comment, you help show the reach of social media in general, and Twitter in particular…and in a forum to which you can refer later, to show your internal doubters what can happen in less than three days, over a weekend, via Twitter.

Check back here for details on how to participate, or follow the #Tweetcamp3 hashtag.

Update: Here’s the link for the Tweetcamp presentation and video Webcast. Go here at 3 p.m. EDT/2 p.m. CDT/Noon PDT to participate live, and join the discussion via Twitter at #tweetcamp3 or by entering the #tweetcamp3 room at Tweetchat.com.

Please do leave a comment below with your attendance plans, though, so we can have a record of the scope of participation.

Twitter Case Study: Finding GPS in a Hospital Haystack

I was in a meeting today with Kim from our Mayo Clinic Quality office discussing how social media and tools like the Flip video camera could be used in her work, and she mentioned that she had heard about a hospital in Texas that was giving GPS units to patients when they checked in, so they could more easily navigate to their appointments.

She said she had been wanting to track down the name of that hospital so she could get in touch and learn from the experience to see whether it’s something we might want to try, but that she didn’t really know where to start looking. So she had procrastinated for a few months at least because, as David Allen says in Getting Things Done, if you don’t know what the next action is, you can never move projects forward to completion.

I asked Kim if she would like to try a little Twitter experiment, right then and there, with me putting out the call for the information on Twitter. She was game, so here was my tweet at 2:27 p.m. today:

Within seven minutes my message had been re-tweeted five times, including these:

…and I also had several other responses telling me about RFID options and a pilot program that puts GPS devices in the shoes of Alzheimer’s patients to help track them if they go wandering.

By 2:39, 12 minutes after my original tweet, I had what I think is likely the definitive answer:

But besides the answer I was seeking, having asked the question on Twitter led to some new alternatives that I think Kim hadn’t been considering.

Lessons and Observations:

Using relevant hashtags is a great way to have your tweet go to people beyond those who follow you directly. In this case I used #hcsm and #hcmktg. I’ve participated more in the former than the latter, but knowing about them enabled me to ask a relevant question in a virtual space where like-minded people gather.
Investing time in Twitter builds capacity for future efficiency. The fact that I was familiar with Twitter, had some followers and knew some appropriate hashtags meant that I could find out in 12 minutes what had stymied Kim for several months. It’s possible that a new Twitter user with a question like that would get an answer, but likely only if a vendor had a Twitter search term set for “GPS.” Twitter isn’t a quick fix; it’s built on relationships. That takes some time, but once you’ve put in some effort you will see that the community will come to your aid.
With Twitter, I didn’t have to know where to start looking, or who to ask. I asked my tweeps, and some of them passed it along to their tweeps. With email I would have had to decide where to send the message. With Twitter the message just seems to find the right people, provided you have started by putting in a little time to start a network.

Thanks to @stephaniethum, @nanoni127, @shamsha, @BethHarte, @JohnSalmonHUP, @josullivan, @lwelchman, @Cascadia, @lisacrymes, @DaphneLeigh, @DynamicRFID, @NickDawson, @tstitt, @mkhendricks, @MikaLofton, @mkmackey, @ljstarnes, and @gelogenic for participating today!

That’s the power of Twitter: 18 people coming together with no notice to discuss a topic and get an answer to a perplexing question (and to suggest other interesting alternatives) in less than an hour.

Social Technologies in Health Care – Part IV

In Part III of this series, I offered a recommendation for health care associations with regard to Twitter:

Create a Twitter account for your association, if only for defensive purposes. Use Twitterfeed to automatically tweet.

I think that was fine, as far as it went, and I think it is an essential step. But in the last two months I have seen immense potential for beneficial engagement by actively becoming involved with Twitter at the organizational level. It needs to be more than just a defensive measure.

I see Twitter being valuable not just for communication with members, but also for outreach to people who share your organization’s goals but may not yet be members. I believe it’s really worth your time to understand it, and to that end recommend the SMUG Twitter curriculum (or for an overview, going through the #tweetcamp2 course, for which the slides and accompanying videos from the Webcast archive are embedded below.)

Tweetcamp II – Twitter Bootcamp

View more presentations from Lee Aase.

3 Steps to Preparing for Tweetcamp II

Our Mayo Clinic (@mayoclinic) social media team is hosting Tweetcamp II (#tweetcamp2) on Thursday, April 23, 2009 from 3-4 p.m. CDT. You can sign up to participate in the comments on this post (please leave your organization name and city) and can get more details, including the link to the live video stream, on the Mayo Clinic News Blog.

After you’ve signed up, here are 3 steps you can take in advance to get the most out of the experience (and to help share the opportunity):

Sign up for a Twitter account if you haven’t yet. If you need assistance, go through Twitter 102: Creating an Account.
Using your Twitter username, log into the #tweetcamp2 “room” in TweetChat. Use it to tweet your plans to attend, and if you wouldn’t mind, copy and paste the link to this post into your tweet (or you could use this abbreviation to save characters: http://bit.ly/q9hgu) You will see that you don’t need to add the #tweetcamp2 hashtag if you tweet from that Web interface, and that it automatically subtracts the 12 characters in the tag from your 140-character limit.
To put a smile on your face as you look forward fondly to your upcoming Tweetcamp II experience (and so I don’t need to show this video during the session) take a couple of minutes to view this video on Sharing Mayo Clinic. And if you like it, Tweet it to your followers: http://bit.ly/pjqY

These three steps will help you see some of the power of Twitter, and at Tweetcamp II you’ll get even more hands-on experience.

Announcing Tweetcamp II

Attendance and participation at last week’s Twitter bootcamp — dubbed “Tweetcamp” — was strong, but with less than 20 hours from announcement to course delivery we had lots of people express interest in participating, but inability to join us due to schedule conflicts.

Tweetcamp II will be held Thursday, April 23 at 3 p.m. CDT. It will cover some of the same material as Tweetcamp, but will have expanded examples of practical applications and case studies, particularly related to health care.

The course is primarily for Mayo Clinic employees and will be offered by videoconference from our Rochester, Minn. campus to Mayo sites in Arizona and Florida, but it’s also open on a first-come, first-served basis via the Web to interested individuals outside of Mayo. Your participation will help demonstrate the power of tools like Twitter to bring together a broadly dispersed community with common interests.

If you would like to join us on Thursday, leave a comment below with your name and organizational affiliation. Your email address will not be published, but we will need it to contact you with further details on how to participate.

Update: The hashtag for Tweetcamp II will be #tweetcamp2 (here is the room in TweetChat), and instead of phone conference you will be able to particpate live via Web cast. See this post on the Mayo Clinic News Blog for details.