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:

  1. 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
  2. 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?
  3. 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
  4. 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”
  5. 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.

Vacation Highlights

I was back at work today after spending the last few days in Indianapolis for Bible Bowl. We’ll be back to our regular social media coursework shortly, but here are a few reflections and memories from four days in Indy (and two days traveling there and back):

It was a joy to see our granddaughter, Evelyn, and her parents as they joined us from their home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Here’s a picture of Evelyn after having gotten a hairdo from her mom in our hotel room:

evelyn-hairdo

Lisa and I were also glad to have three of our four parents and five of our six children be with us for this family getaway. We missed Lisa’s mom and our son Jake and wished they were there too, but we were thankful everyone else could make it.

Another highlight was that Joe and Bekah got to play in the National Bible Bowl 3-on-3 basketball tournament, which was held at Conseco Fieldhouse following a Sunday night WNBA game (Indiana vs. Atlanta.) Here’s some footage from the semifinal game, which they lost 15-10.

Finally, here’s the Austin Bible Bowl team photo taken after they were awarded their fifth-place medals (out of 120 teams) in the double-elimination tournament.

austinbiblebowl20093

And here’s the story that ran in today’s Austin Post-Bulletin after an editor saw my #biblebowl09 tweets and assigned a reporter.

It was a great few days…but now it’s time to resume our regularly scheduled classes!

Bible Bowl Quoting Bee 2009

The National Bible Bowl competition, in which my kids participated over the last several days in Indiana, involves memorization of large sections of the Bible, at leas for those who want to be successful. Last year the assigned text was the Gospel of John, along with 1 John,  2 John, 3 John, 1 Peter and 2 Peter. This year the text covered six great prophets, and was taken from I Kings, 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Jonah.

A relatively recent addition to the main competition is the Quoting Bee, in which participants are given a single verse reference, and within 10 seconds must begin to quote the verse, starting at the first word and ending exactly at the last word.

It’s hard enough to memorize an extended passage; pulling a verse right out of the middle of a chapter like Jeremiah 19:3 as my daughter Ruthie does in the video below (she’s the fifth contestant) is amazing:

Here is the climactic moment of the Quoting Bee, in which Ross Smith of Towne South (North Carolina) edged Breanna Hayes of Valley View (Dallas, TX) for the top spot:

Ruthie made it through six rounds of the qualifying contest and four rounds of the finals before making a mistake. She finished in a tie for sixth place.

Bible Bowl 2009

I’ve written some posts over the last couple of years about my kids being involved in Bible Bowl, such as this one from 2007 and this from 2008. My daughter Ruthie, who has been the “franchise player” for the team, just graduated from high school, so this year’s national competition in Indianapolis is her last.

Bible Bowl is a team game, but most teams typically have one key player who wins the toss-up questions. That’s Ruthie. So when I say “Ruthie won” or “Ruthie had a tough time in last year’s round robin” it’s because so much of the team’s performance depends on winning toss-up questions, and also because she is the hardest-working and most dedicated member of her team. Her brother Joe and sister Rebekah are key contributors to the Austin team, and it’s been great to have them all doing this together (Bekah also graduated in June; Joe will be in 9th grade next year.)

During the first couple of days of the competition the teams play a round robin format to determine seeding for the double elimination competition. The teams are grouped into pods or pools of 12 based on how they have done earlier in the year, and then those teams all play each other, and are seeded for the double elimination based on their pool record.

In some ways the round robin doesn’t really matter, as Ruthie showed last year. Her team lost every game in round robin, was seeded 12th, and still came back to finish fifth in the double elimination tournament. She’s kind of streaky that way.

This year she’s off to a much better start, with a 6-2 record and tied for first in the round robin, with three games tomorrow afternoon. Two of those games are against the teams with which Austin is tied, so it’s nice that she can just focus on the games she’s playing instead of depending on someone else losing.

Of course, the most important thing is that through the competition the kids are learning a lot and memorizing lots of scripture. But it’s nice to have Ruthie doing well in the competition since she has worked so hard.

Bible Bowl has been our family vacation for the last couple of years, as we went to Kansas City in 2007 and Atlanta in 2008. We’re glad to have my parents joining us again this year and Lisa’s dad attending for the first time. And a big highlight is that my daughter Rachel and her husband Kyle were able to come for the weekend with our granddaughter, Evelyn.

evie

So for the next few days, until Wednesday, my Twitter stream will be mostly personal. If you want to follow the Bible Bowl tweets, you can use this hashtag: #BibleBowl09. Looks like I’m the only one using it right now, but let’s see if we can get that to change.

But now it’s time to stop blogging about vacation and resume my experience of it.

Here’s hoping everyone is having a great Independence Day!

Guest-Hosting For Immediate Release

Tomorrow I’m honored to get the chance to be a guest co-host on For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report. Neville, the first half of the duo, has some conflicts and needed the week off, so Shel asked me to join him on the Thursday program. Steve Crescenzo filled in ably on Monday.

I’m looking forward to the experience; we’re recording at 11 a.m. CDT. Shel and I have exchanged topics for the discussion and I think it will be a good program. We’ll be talking some about social media in health care, but also some more general topics. Since it’s a podcast, you can’t listen live…but if you want to tweet questions or comments, use the #FIR tag. I will post the program when it’s done.

Update: Here’s the link to the FIR podcast post. Let me know what you think!