(Originally posted in the 2015 INFORMS blog).
We did it! #informs2015 registered a new record for an ORMS conference on Twitter!
In 2015 the number of tweets has reached the same order as the number of participants:
- 1,651 tweets in a month
- 1,541 tweets for the past week
- 1,074 tweets just in the last 3 days
Beyond those impressive numbers, online engagement has brought the conference experience to a whole new level. Connectivity has not replaced physical presence but rather leveraged it: you get to know people first online and then in person as you walk into sessions or visit vendor booths. INFORMS is all about connecting people and thus here goes my pledge for 2016: Twitter handles in the registration form and on the badges. Many of us are already writing ours with a pen. The culture of online engagement is already here. Let’s embrace it altogether!
I hope to see our online community back and strong to rock those numbers up in Nashville! Maybe then tweets will finally outnumber conference attendance.
The only question open, though, is whether we will be tweeting #informs2016 or #informs16
Yours,
@thserra
Thiago Serra 