If you haven’t, what are you waiting for? Space is limited, so register now!

For our out-of-towners: we blocked off hotel rooms at the Holiday Inn on Broad Street (the main street in downtown Athens). Rooms are set at $92/ night and have airport transportation for $40 each way. Want to cut costs? See who else from your university is going and maybe you can share a room.  (The Facebook group is a great way to network with others going to the event — connect with someone else looking for a roomie!)

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We can’t wait to see everyone in Athens for some hands-on social media training. We will post important information about the conference. Let us know if you have any questions about the event and make sure to stop by to see new posts. Here’s some crucial information for potential attendees:

You can register online now.

Price is $25 for students to go to the Bootcamp and reception at East West Bistro. That’s a great deal, let’s be honest, even for college students. Tons of networking chances and social media fun to be had, so register early to secure a spot!

If you can’t go to our daytime conference, you can pay just $10 for the networking reception at East West.

Educators can look forward to round table discussions led by Phil Gomes and learning to integrate social media in the classroom for only $40.

Remember space is limited so register early and bring friends for a great weekend in Athens.

It will be worth your time. Trust me.

Before we began planning the Edelman Digital Bootcamp in earnest, we began with questions. Lots of questions in fact: what should we discuss, how long should the event be, with which tools you were familiar.

The truth is we thought we had a lot of answers. We were completely ready to plan a two-day event but thankfully like good PR practitioners we conducted research instead of going with our gut.

And so we deployed our survey to more than 50 PR schools in the Southeast even though we thought we already knew what you would say. Boy, are we glad we asked!

When the responses came in, from nearly 170 students and 295 educators (a 29% response rate), we were truly surprised to find that nearly 85 percent of students wanted a one-day event! A fact we would have never guessed had we not conducted research.

That was just the beginning of the great things we learned:
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Bootcamp? What for?

My friend called me up the other day to invite me to a party on Saturday. Instinctively, I asked: “What are we celebrating?”

The truth is we can’t plan a party, an event or a campaign without a clear intention and purpose to guide us.

Our purpose in creating the Edelman Digital Bootcamp was clear: Educate students in social media techniques.

Why?

Simply put, we believe in Web 2.0. We believe in engaging in the conversation and getting back to what public relations was designed to do: build relationships.
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