Roxanne Darling at Podcamp Hawaii
Photo by Chris Heuer

I'm on the road quite a bit for work and have visited some amazing places.  Usually the family stays behind.  But when I had an opportunity to go to Hawaii to teach a Social Media Club workshop with Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells, and Roxanne Darling, my family insisted on coming along.   So, decided my husband and my two children decided to come along and take an all too brief vacation in Hawaii on the island of Ohau.

We left Boston on Wednesday early morning and arrived in Honolulu that afternoon.  I got up early for the workshop on Thursday, while my family explored Waikiki.  The workshop was an introduction to social media for businesses and nonprofits.  The morning included presentations on why social media was important, some big picture concepts, case studies, and lots more.  The presenters were Roxanne Darling, Chris Heuer, and Kristie Wells.  I took notes here.

In the afternoon, we played an Aloha version of the Social Media Game, a training game that lets small groups go through the exercise of putting together a social media strategy.  I took some live notes over on the wiki, but Lorelle on Wordpress - who was in town for Hawaii Geek Week and PodCamp/WordCamp, has a wonderful post summarizing the learnings from the game that can be taken into your practice.

The amazing Roxanne Darling and many dedicated Hawaiian social media leaders have organized Podcamp and WordCamp Hawaii.   The event brought together over 500 participants to the Hawaii Convention Center to meet some of the top podcasters, bloggers, videobloggers, social media experts, and web gurus.   I attended the first morning (with my entire family!) and heard a session called "Using New Media To Capture Outbound Chinese Tourism" with Roxanne Darling and and Christine Lu, founder of the China Business Network.

 
Hanging with Neenz from All Top.

I probably wouldn't have gotten to the beach or enjoyed Island culture if my family wasn't here, I would have been blogging the whole time!    We did get a chance to hang some social media geeks.  My kids just loved Neenz from All Top, not only because she gave them all top stickers with the donkey word on them, but because she said to us "Go to the beach now!"

So, that's my excuse for leaving podcamp so early ....  I just couldn't listen to sessions about Tourism 2.0 without experiencing Hawaii as a Social Media tourist.   So, we headed off to the North Shore, and I tweeted, flickered, and streamed our fun.  Here my Hawaiian Travel Journal.

Beth Kanter, BlogHer CE for Social Change and Nonprofits, writes Beth's Blog.