Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

What can city people learn from rural folks?

If my own experience is any indication – a TON.

Thanks to a diverse social network that includes interesting people in small towns and rural areas, I’ve learned so much over the last few years about the hopes, dreams, troubles and blissful moments of people who live in what I used to call “out in the middle of nowhere.”

They’re more tech-savvy than you’d think …. I recently found an AgChat Foundation Facebook discussion about the hot new Pinterest social sharing service and how farmers might use it for “agvocacy.”

You know that ongoing discussion about getting broadband internet access out into rural areas? It sure seems similar to efforts in the 1930′s to get electricity and telephone service out to less-populated places, and the same objections are being raised; it’s too expensive, there aren’t enough people to justify it, it’s a “luxury” they don’t really need, etc.  I never really thought about this problem until I got to know some small town geeks.

At last fall’s 140 Characters/State of NOW Small Town communications conference in Hutchinson, Kansas, I was honored to be chosen as one of the speakers, and I talked about this personal awakening.

There were some video problems at first, so all I have for you is the audio recording, but it’s only about 10 minutes and I talk fast.

Here’s the direct link to the audio file if you can’t see the embed box below:  http://blip.tv/140confevents/140conf-smalltown-2011-sheila-scarborough-city-kid-among-the-cattle-5639673 

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Decisions, decisions….

Budgets are tight these days (Washington State’s tourism organization was completely disbanded this month) and yet there is a wealth of great content ready to be absorbed and connections to be made during the fall conference season.

How to decide who from the office goes where and how much money to spend? This is especially important for social media and tech events, because the ground is shifting rapidly and you don’t want to learn the wrong thing from knuckleheads.

I offered some thoughts and ideas in a guest post on the BlogWorld blog, “RoundUp of Fall Tourism Tech Conferences,” and it’s a tribute to the BlogWorld organization that they weren’t at all balky about letting me talk up competing conferences on their website. They’re a class act; they know that there is plenty of opportunity to go around in the not-so-new landscape of “new media,” social communication and technology.

Here is my advice in a nutshell….and please keep in mind that I’m a track leader at BlogWorld and speaking at both SoMeT and eTourism Summit, so I want all of them to succeed….

When is BlogWorld best?

If you want maximum opportunity to connect with a wide variety of bloggers and other online publishers, plus attend focused educational panels and hear industry speakers on social media for tourism and hospitality, then the Tourism track at BlogWorld and New Media Expo West in Los Angeles, CA November 3-5, 2011 is your best bet.

—-> Who should go? BlogWorld is perfect for your staff networking/schmoozing fiend who is also getting really good at social media (or who wants to get to that level.)

Don’t forget – super early bird discount pricing (50% off) ends on Thursday, July 21, 2011 - and you can use code TC20 to knock 20% off of any pass right up until the conference closes online registration in November.

Go here to read up on the Tourism track and register.

When is SoMeT best?

If you want to mix it up with tech- and social media-savvy tourism peers at a small conference of the very geekiest CVBs, DMOs and Tourist Boards, then the Symposium on Social Media in Tourism (SoMeT) in Tunica, MS November 9-12, 2011 would work for you.

This is where your communications person goes who is WAY ahead of the rest of the office, and who needs to stay at his or her “A” game for the benefit of your destination.

—-> Who should go?  SoMeT is great for your geekiest staffer who was on Foursquare and slinging QR codes months before anyone else.

When is eTourism Summit best?

If you’re looking for high-level discussions of travel and tourism technology as a whole, consider the eTourism Summit in San Francisco, CA September 29-30, 2011.

Lots of strategy and integration discussions, with a bit more of an international flavor than the others, looking at technology beyond social media.

—->  Who should go? eTourism Summit is a good idea for your Director who is trying to keep that 30,000 foot, integrated marketing view amongst insanely rapid tech and social media changes.

I know that a lot of conferences and events compete for attention and dollars, so I hope this helps your decision-making process.

Any other suggestions? Fire away down in the comments!

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How would your 25-year-old self react if he or she heard you say, ”I’m too old to figure out all of this technology and social media stuff?”

Think about the words that might be used.

“Age has nothing to do with it.”

“You’re smart; what’s the problem?”

“You only need to be willing to learn and try.”

“If you can’t see the little smartphone screen, then put on some of those reading glasses you guys use.”

“But you love to write….tell stories….talk on the phone….see a good movie or TV show….meet people….share photos….  Is this so different?”

“Has this really happened to you? Why?”

Why, indeed.

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This was the generation that saw the Soviet Union launch the beach ball-sized Sputnik I spacecraft in 1957. That moment was a turning point in the life of then 10th-grader Homer Hickam, author of the book Rocket Boys and subsequent movie October Sky.

Sputnik motivated Hickam and an entire nation to embrace technology, kick-start the “space race” and put a man on the moon by 1969.

Boomers were the original geeks.

They watched the earliest television programming (including Star Trek starting in 1966) then bought the first color TVs.  They saw increasingly more sophisticated cars on the road, a telephone installed in every house and electricity delivered to every nook and cranny of the nation.

Their superb tech heritage is going by the wayside, however, as many are letting themselves be Sputnik’d….surprised and intimidated….by thumb-texting, Facebook-ing, tweeting younger folks.

There was a time when this generation led the way in technical prowess, and not just those in their 20′s and 30′s.  Grace Hopper was writing and creating the COBOL programming language in 1955, when she was 49 – which is my age right now.

Too often, I see my peers and older Boomers wave their hands helplessly about computers, smartphones, digital cameras and social media.

They say, “I’m not really a tech person” or “I don’t understand this stuff” or “I don’t want to mess with this. I’m too old, I guess.”

With their combination of life experience, perspective and tech-savvy history, they could run rings around all of the young punks.   Psychology Today says that:

“Baby Boomers are not the Luddites that some media critics seem to suggest, and in fact are very plugged in to technology adoption, something that marketing initiatives have yet to reflect.”

Good!

Show me more of these plugged-in folks, like boomer travel blogger Donna Hull, or business analyst Miss Dazey or communications wizard Connie Reece. Maybe the helpless hand-wavers I’m seeing are not the norm.

I’d love for that to be true.

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!

This quote from essayist and programmer Paul Graham is about publishing, but it could apply to tourism and destination marketing or travel services in the “war for eyeballs” and attention….

“When you see something that’s taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn’t have before, you’re probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that’s merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you’re probably looking at a loser.”

Is your organization’s approach to technology going to help you win, or help you lose?

(Hat tip to mediabistro.com’s BayNewser blog for first introducing me to the Paul Graham quote, in this post.)

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.