This is a video tag sort of QR code; you can point your smartphone’s camera to it and with the right app (usually a barcode reader but in this case the Microsoft Tag app) some sort of content will pop up.

Content can be everything from some text describing the item that the code is on, to a URL that will open in your phone’s browser, to the coolest thing – a little video playing on your phone.

I can think of some imaginative ways to incorporate these into your downtown walking tour’s historical markers, for one thing.  My Canadian friend Todd Lucier and I are on the same wavelength about QR codes these days….here’s his recent blog post QR Codes: making interpretive signs come to life.

What ideas do you have? Please share in the comments!

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I’ve been experimenting on my new smartphone with location-based services like Gowalla and Foursquare, and have begun leaning hard towards Gowalla as my favorite of the two, particularly since it led me to pies in Houston.

The “killer app” for tourism with Gowalla is the Trips feature; anyone can create a Trip of favorite sights or attractions around a town or region, plus Gowalla has partnered to make branded Trips with organizations like National Geographic, Vail Resorts, the Austin American-Statesman (here’s their Off-Leash Dog Parks, a great idea for visitors and locals alike) and the European Green Capital of Stockholm.

When you boot up Gowalla on your smartphone and select Trips, it shows you nearby Trips based on your location, which it knows from your smartphone’s GPS. I always saw lots of Austin Trips, but nothing for the town where I actually live about 20 miles north: Round Rock.

So, I decided to make my own Trip. Anyone can make up to 10 of them.

Here’s how to do it….

• Decide what would make a good Trip for visitors or locals in your area. Think about a theme and some prospective candidates for checkins. Your downtown walking tour that already exists? Local food places? Historical sites?
• Go to the Trips frontpage on Gowalla, and look to the right side for a big long oval “Create Your Trip” button.
• Fill in the blocks for “Trip Name” and pick the type of Trip from the drop-down menu. There are lots of options. If you have a bunch of different places of different types (like I did for my first Trip) pick Standard.  There are special badges for each.
• Follow the directions:  write up the Trip Details (keep it punchy and succinct – it will mostly be read on smartphone screens) then start picking places by either finding them through Gowalla’s Search or looking at places where you’ve already checked in.
• If you can’t find a Spot, create it yourself! Here are some guidelines for creating a Spot.
• When you get to the descriptive page for your desired Spot, look to the right at the drop-downs for Actions. One of the options is “Add to Trip,” so do that.
• Keep going until you have a reasonable number of places added to your Trip. You must have at least 3 but no more than 20. You can edit the descriptions of Spots in your Trip.
• Polish it up and publish, then put the link on your websites, Facebook Page, announce it on Twitter, etc.

I’m working on a second Trip now, with local places where I like to eat (it will have the Foodie badge.)

Branded badges with your logo require graphics assistance through Gowalla; email Team Gowalla directly at businesses {at} gowalla.com to discuss.

It’s that easy; go jump in!

(Update: I’ve since figured out that my Trip can only be seen on the phone app by people that I’m friends with on Gowalla, although anyone can see it on the main Gowalla website. This is rather problematic since I’m only connecting with people that I really, really feel that I know on location-based services like Gowalla, for obvious security reasons.  I would think that for branded trips by a CVB, coordinated through Gowalla, it would be a little looser, but I’m not certain. More investigation to follow.)

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Are you responsible in some way for a festival or special event, and would like to get jump-started using social media to promote it?

I always advise including social media as an integral part of your overall marketing plan, not sticking it on as an afterthought, but sometimes you do need to push the train forward a bit even if all the track isn’t laid to the end.

Hey, it worked for the US Transcontinental Railroad….

If your festival or special event is coming up quickly, here are some things you can do to enhance your online presence, and then you’ll have a platform to build on more thoughtfully for next year:

1)  Get a Facebook Page.  Not a Group – a Page. Give more than one person administrative access to it. Your event logo is fine as an avatar. Put it in the Organization-NonProfit category; that’s probably the one that applies best to festivals.  Fill out the Info section thoroughly, with event dates, location and times, simple directions from the main access points, links to your website and any other social media sites you have, and a contact email and phone number.

Put up a few Wall posts, especially some photos and short videos from last year’s event if you have them, and get the word out to your networks that some “Likes” of your Page would be appreciated. Once you get to 25, um, “Likers,” you can switch the Facebook URL to a more personalized one with your name.

Connect with your local CVB, DMO, state tourism office, town government, Chamber of Commerce and the businesses that sponsor your event, at a minimum.

Here is why special events expert Penny Reeh likes Facebook (direct link to the video on YouTube if you can’t see it below)

2)  Get a Twitter account. Make sure it’s something that approximates your event name, but is not too long (that uses up valuable characters and you only get 140 per tweet.)  Make sure that more than one person can tweet from the account, and that you’re set up to tweet from mobile devices.  Don’t worry about amassing a ton of followers right away; many won’t be the right folks anyway (unless you want to lose weight with acai berries.)  You want people who care about and want to connect with your event.

See the Texas Book Festival – @texasbookfest – as an example.

Connect with your local CVB, DMO, state tourism office, town government, Chamber of Commerce and the businesses that sponsor your event, at a minimum.

3)  Create a hashtag for your event.  You don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to do so. A hashtag is a unique identifier for tweets related to your event, plus it can go in the descriptions of Flickr photos, YouTube videos, etc. Pick something short.

Take a look at #TBEX (a travel blogger’s conference) tweets as an example of a very engaged bunch following a hashtag.

Make sure your followers know to use it; if you can get folks to use it, it will be easier to monitor your event as it occurs (I use hashtags all the time to follow conferences from a distance.)

4)  Start thinking visually about coverage.  Not a photo or video expert? Don’t let that stop you. Simply think hard about what sort of compelling visual opportunities may be coming up in your event….backstage excitement? Anything you can catch up close in rehearsal? Fun moments at the cotton candy concession?  Get that digital point-and-shoot camera in your pocket and remember to use it liberally, including the video function that most of them now have.

Photos and videos are popular and evoke emotion and interest. They really amp up your Facebook Page and can also go up to Twitter via services like TwitPic and TwitVid.

If you have a smartphone, learn ahead of time how to shoot a photo and upload it from the phone to Facebook and Twitter. You can’t beat the ease and convenience of such coverage.

5)  Tell your fans and supporters where to find you online.  Put it up on posters, at the event entry and exit points, print it out on flyers and the festival map, announce it on the PA – let visitors know that you’d like to hear from them (before, during and after the fun) on Facebook and Twitter, and that they can post their best photos and video to your Wall.

Did that about cover it for quick-launch?

I’ll be speaking at the 2010 TFEA (Texas Festivals and Events Association) annual conference this week about social media for special events;  say hello if you see me there, or please leave a comment below if I missed a good tip.

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As a member of the Travel Insights 100 group of travel aficionados on UpTake, I’m looking forward to seeing all of the results of the latest member survey, asking us two questions:

• What trends or predictions do you forecast for the next year within the travel industry? and
• What are the dumbest moments in travel during the past year?

We could answer both questions or just one, so based on my talk at the recent Social Media Breakfast Austin, I chose to tackle the future. Here’s what I said in response to the Insights survey question….

“I predict the mainstreaming of social media into travel, helped along considerably by the cross-generational adoption of Facebook and the explosion of mobile/smartphones.

Not only is Grandma on Facebook, she’s going to figure out that her Blackberry (or iPhone or whatever it is) just put the Internet into her purse as well.

Lordy, now she can upload photos of her grandkids to her Facebook page while riding through “It’s A Small World After All” at Disney World!

Not within this year, but soon enough, social media is going to be “the way we do things” and will be as accepted and ubiquitous as email. No one advertises their services as an “Email Guru,” do they?

Mobile is going to explode because there are going to be multiple handset options available across all of the major carriers, thanks to Google’s Android (I don’t think Palm can recover their dominance, nor Windows Mobile, unless they do something extraordinary very soon. RIM/Blackberry and maybe Nokia have more of a fighting chance for impact.)

Go, Grandma, go!”

I’ll pop up an update post when the rest of the Insights results come out later this week.

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Does part of your destination marketing include trying to attract “leaf-peepers”  –  visitors who particularly enjoy traveling to see autumn foliage? (Soon I hope to visit the Lost Maples area here in Texas for those pretty reds and yellows.)

Why not steal a page from one of the latest uses for Twitter – roving location/update reports from food trucks, like this insanely popular Korean BBQ truck in Los Angeles – and use social media tools to provide timely reports of leaf color for your location.

Some area color displays change very quickly in the fall, and prospective visitors may make last-minute travel plans based on the most timely and complete reports.

The weekly color updates that many tourism Web sites offer are nice, and many have elaborate whiz-bang display interfaces, but that seems a slow and clunky way to make these reports in 2009 (plus it means you have to wait on your Webmaster to do all the work.)

Use the social Web to your advantage!

Some locations and regions already have foliage blogs, like Yankee magazine’s New England Foliage Blog or Oregon tourism’s Fall Foliage Report blog, but it would be even easier and faster to use Twitter for quick updates by your staff out on the road.

In fact, Oregon is already there with their @ORFallFoliage Twitter stream.  Good for them!

Any of your staffers with halfway well-equipped cell phones can snap photos when they’re out and about, and then send them in from the mobile device straight to TwitPic or YFrog for posting on Twitter.

I did this myself with an absolutely ancient Samsung flip phone, using it to take a photo of a bougainvillea plant in my back yard and then email it, from the phone, to a special email address that links to my TwitPic account.

• Here is what the tweet looks like, with the TwitPic link embedded, emailed to TwitPic from my phone.
• Here is what the photo looks like on its specific page on my TwitPic account (every photo has a URL.)

What about it, tourism gurus? Why or why not is this a good idea for your organization? Your comments below are welcomed.

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After a quick Tourism Currents pre-launch meeting with my business partner Becky McCray….

….and did I mention that she’s a BusinessWeek Top 20 Entrepreneur to follow on Twitter? Well, she is!

….and don’t you know it makes her crazy when I do this kind of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” off-topic diversion….

Anyway, we arranged a one-night planning session in Dallas, meeting roughly halfway between our homes in Oklahoma and Texas (because you can only do so much organizing even with regular video Skype calls.)  On the drive back to my house, I was so pumped up about the great learning material that we’re developing to combine tourism marketing and social Web tools, I just HAD to talk about it.

I used Utterli and my cell phone to call in an audio post (that I can embed in a blog post, as I’ve done here) from the parking lot of a Taco Bell in Waco, Texas.

Because I know how to live it up!

(If you can’t see the audio player box below, here’s the URL directly to the recording.)

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It’s hard to take something called “Twitter” seriously, I know, but the various cutesy-named social media tools and applications are not important in and of themselves.

It is what people are doing with them.

These are early days for Web connection technology, very much akin to the early days of the automobile. Sure, the first cars were loud, stupid and rather unreliable, compared to Ye Olde Horse.

Why bother, said most folks.  Aren’t those silly new machines a ridiculous extravagance?

If, however, one looked beyond how to make the danged things work, and finding decent roads to drive them on, and locating places that sold gas, tires and parts, one could see the Big Picture….fast and affordable personal transportation across vast distances, anywhere, anytime.

That’s the social Web, too: human connection, anywhere and anytime.

Today I’m reading a John Sutter article on CNN.com about Steve Tucker, a farmer in Brandon, Nebraska who sends tweets from his tractor (I learned about the article on Twitter, of course.)

Who the hell cares, you ask? I care. Here is why, from the article:

“Tucker is proof that smartphones are starting to put down roots in rural America. He lives in a 150-person town near Brandon, Nebraska — a place even he calls ‘the middle of nowhere.’ The nearest neighbor to his 4,000-acre farm is about 2 miles away.

Yet, farmers like Tucker are using Internet-enabled phones to gain a foothold on online social networks — both for business and personal reasons. (Follow him on Twitter)

‘I can be in the most remote place and just with the power of having a BlackBerry … I can communicate with anybody at anytime about anything,’ he said. ‘It is just amazing.’

The growth of smartphones on farms is important because many people don’t think about where their food comes from, much less associate a specific farmer with that process, said Andy Kleinschmidt, a farmer and agricultural extension educator at Ohio State University.

‘When you can put a name or personality with someone who’s actually raising corn and soybeans or actually milking cows, that’s the most important thing that’s come about in my opinion,’ he said.”

We are watching our society knit itself together, making far-reaching human connections across timezones and cultures, in totally new and unexpected ways.  I learned about Steve in Nebraska on the same day that I reconnected with a wonderful travel writer in Florida;  I first heard Tom Swick speak at the best annual book festival anywhere, and now he’s figuring out what to do with Twitter, just like Steve on the tractor.

I would not miss this moment in history for anything, even if it does come laden with goofy names for the tools we are using to make that history.

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