How social media tools can enhance and extend the reach of an event

This past Fri­day I went to a fun­draiser Celebrity Chef event hos­ted by a friend and loc­al Edmon­ton social media per­son­al­ity (and Bacon Guy) Jerry Aulenbach.

Held at a loc­al premi­er bur­ger res­taur­ant, the even­ing was one of good food, good con­ver­sa­tion, and a lot of glow­ing screens.

The res­taur­ant had set aside a sec­tion for the fun­draiser crew, com­plete with a laptop and projector.

Audi­ence Participation
This is where the first Social Media tool comes in. Jerry had Twit­ter­Fall set up on the pro­ject­or, which means all the tweets that even­ing using the hasht­ag #YEG­Bur­ger would be pro­jec­ted for all to see on the wall.

Broad­cast­ing to the masses
And since there were a few iPhones in hand, photo cov­er­age had to hap­pen. We used Ins­tagram to upload some images dur­ing the even­ing. In my case, I had my iPad and cam­era, so used the Apple Cam­era Con­nec­tion Kit to off­load images from my SD card, edit them on the iPad, then upload them with Ins­tagram. Worked quite well! Once set up, Ins­tagram can upload your pho­tos to Twit­ter, Face­book, Tumblr, or Flickr in one go. Very handy.

Twit­ter
The last app. is really the one that holds this whole instant cov­er­age of an event togeth­er — Twit­ter. Without that com­mon hasht­ag chan­nel , #yeg­bur­ger, half the spon­tan­eous fun in the room would have been lost.

Twit­ter was the ini­tial meet­ing place for many of the attendees, and was a great way to encour­age par­ti­cip­a­tion in this fun­draiser. And, Twit­ter allowed folks at the event a way to eas­ily share the goings on with oth­ers unable to attend.

So we had fun, still engaged in social media whilst out in the world, and at the end of the night, we even raised a few dol­lars for a very good cause.

Update! Video is yet anoth­er social media vec­tor, as this awe­some Time-Lapse video of the even­ing’s shen­anagans (includ­ing the Bacon Suit) will attest:

#yeg­Bur­ger from Rob & Lauren on Vimeo.

This post of is one of many I pub­lish weekly at the Future Shop Techb­log. Read more of my stuff here.