Calling all bloggers at the World Conservation Congress!

Wherever you look at the IUCN World Conservation Congress, you see people frantically typing away on their laptops. Some of them must be blogging, some of them must be twittering, that’s for sure.

There’s no real social media strategy for the congress, so we’re building one from scratch. So far we've:

1. Found out what’s out there
   A simple search gave us a list of people who had twittered their departure to the congress, a handful of blogposts, and two social networks targeted at congress participants.
2. Said ‘hi’
   The next step was to join the networks, follow the people and leave a helpful comment or two. We also proposed to use a tag for congress related things (wcc08)
3. Shared what we’ve found
   A special page on the congress website links to all social media places. In addition, a tumblelog collects quotes from all blogposts.
4. Filled the feedreader with relevant searches
   For easy updating, subscribed to relevant searches on flickr, technorati, blogsearch, delicious, etc.
5. Create gathering places where they were missing
   In our case, this consists of a special twitter account and a flickr pool.

We now know of a good dozen active bloggers and twitterers at congress, and made sure they know of us. It would be great to see them refer to our services and infrastructure over the next couple of days, and create a conversation. And then, maybe, possibly, engage those that are not yet using social media. Seven days to go.