I have to tell you that the weather here in New Orleans was just perfect. The temps here today were in the 70s - maybe even hit 80 here today. What a great day to have a meeting, huh? Actually, I think a lot of people were at the Jazz Fest - as the meeting traffic was not as busy as yesterday.
At the end of the day, there was an interesting presentation about New Orleans in a post Hurricane Katrina world. The speaker put up maps from the US Geological Service which tell the story of how much erosion has taken place in this part of the country from the environment. You can see an example of this map by clicking here (you may have to zoom out a bit). In addition, I didn't realize how much commerce takes place through this city and if the port of New Orleans would go away for any reason, just how much that would impact any state or community who has access to the Mississippi River.
I know I'm bias, but today's highlight for me was my social media presentation with my good friend Deb Clements. We talked about social media and Family Medicine. I've presented these slides on a few occasions in the past few weeks. So, I was really comfortable with the material. What I've been working on for these past few talks have been my flow of the presentation and the pacing of the presentation. At some point, I probably should write up a blog post about my evolution as a conference speaker - because it's been an interesting process - as process of self-discovery as well.
Anyway, feel free to check out the full presentation above. Thanks to STFM for making their ustream channel available and for the free wi-fi during the meeting for the participants. (Attention all conference organizers, if you want to make social media work at your meeting, please make free wi-fi available to the participants.) Thanks also to Mark Ryan for running the camera for me. I realize that the video production quality is not ideal, but this is just an example of what can be done with a budget of zero. I supplied all the video equipment after doing extensive research on this topic. If I get time (which has been difficult for me), I'll try to edit this vid into smaller chunks to make it easier for consumption.
I'm not heading home until Sunday, but this will probably be the last post from this meeting. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the social media projects that I was a part of this week. I was hoping to show the Family Medicine community some of the potential of using Social Media in the setting of a meeting. In addition to blog posts like this, there is the ability to use twitter during the meeting, live podcasting over the internet during the meeting, live video stream of meeting sessions, and even having a live twitter chat connecting the people on site with the people off site at home. If you felt connected to this meeting, even though you were not actually here, my goal has been achieved :)