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Virgin Atlantic organising travel social media event on Fri 28th Nov 08 [London]

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Virgin Atlantic (airline) are looking for help forming their social media strategy. They have turned to potential users and are organising a barcamp (V-Jam) in central London on the 28th of Nov 08 (during the day).

50-60 attendees are to be invited.

Via TravellerWithATale

If you’re interested in going to the event you should fill our their short questionnaire which asks about your experience and background, and they will let you know if you’ve been selected to attend. The day will take an unstructured, almost barcamp style form with attendees creating the schedule as they go, and promises to be quite interesting. Oh, and I head rumour of some drinks afterward…

You have to apply…..  so probably no one from British Airways should go!

Apply online

What is weird is that there are plenty of travel ecommerce / travel social media bloggers (like me) who would be delighted to attend - and this is one occasion when a press release in our direction would have been appreciated! I love the concept of the day and have applied - lets see what happens.

Kudos to TravellerWithATale who have scooped everyone with the news. Not a single other mention elsewhere on the web - which - with 2 weeks to go - is probably not a great start. We got 70-80 this week at the latest travel blogging / travel social media barcamp in London (where I spoke)….. and if we had known about it then - it would have been a great place to make other travel social media types aware.

More from Nesta about the event - or read this PDF (which has lots of detail)


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8 Responses to “Virgin Atlantic organising travel social media event on Fri 28th Nov 08 [London]”


  1. November 17th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
    Jeremy Head

    Hi Alex
    Handy post… thanks… Have filled in the questionnaire too… so maybe see you there (of course if one of us is selected and the other isn’t we can spend time debating on your blog or mine as to why!!!) ;-)

    cheers
    Jeremy

  2. November 17th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
    Darren Cronian

    Virgin won’t know anything about this.

    It’ll be the PR/Marketing agency picking bloggers brains for free. Sorry to be skeptical.

  3. November 17th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
    Alex Bainbridge

    Not sure they want pure-breed bloggers - but social media people who understand travel and social media. Bloggers, unless uptospeed on what the latest in social media within travel, would actually be worse than neutral - because we may be tempted to slant the discussion towards blogs (which requires an expert to be involved) vs social media - which is about generating environments where others can flourish.

  4. November 18th, 2008 at 11:58 am
    Jeremy Head

    Hi Guys
    Further to Alex’s post, I did a bit of digging as we work with Virgin Atlantic at iCrossing…
    Virgin Atlantic DO know lots about it… they commissioned and worked with the agency that’s running it. According to the powers that be here at iCrossing they are after ‘input from creative technologists’ whatever that means. My guess is they’ve seen metrotwin and bluenity and are wondering if they should go social… should they?
    If people are interested to go I can suggest them as participants… but can’t guarantee anything as I guess they will need a balance of different types of people with different specialisms.
    Cheers
    J

  5. November 19th, 2008 at 12:29 am
    Darren Cronian

    Alex,

    “people who understand travel and social media”

    that’s comical in itself.

  6. November 19th, 2008 at 1:00 am
    Alex Bainbridge

    Why is that comical Darren?

    I admit those particular circles don’t make a great venn diagram (as there is little overlap - certainly from those who could give some free advice for an entire day!). Is that what you mean?

  7. November 19th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
    Alex Bainbridge

    Yay - I got invited!

  8. November 19th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
    Jeremy Head

    Well… in that case looks like I’ll see you there! :-)
    PS: Darren what did you mean?

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Comments for this post will be closed on 19 November 2009.




This blog is about travel ecommerce & travel social media with a focus on topics of interest to tour operators & B2C travel companies

Alex has previously started up a small tour operator (5 staff) and also worked for leading "dot coms", airlines, hotel chains and tour operators advising and project managing web, ecommerce, social media and reservation system projects.

We operate TourCMS - a web based reservation system for small tour operators

Exhibiting TourCMS & speaking at
Travel Technology Show
10-11 Feb 2009, London


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