This week NBC News completed their second Education Nation summit, which took place in NYC. After building a magnificent conference venue at Rockefeller Center the news organization hosted parents, educators, and students who “met with leaders in politics, business and technology to explore the challenges and opportunities in education today.” Even NBA Star Lebron James stopped by to talk about the education problems his home-town of Akron, Ohio faces that must be addressed.
NBC infused social into every component of the summit with the hopes of igniting conversations across the web around the important topics they were addressing. “In 2011, we also have to recognize there’s a huge social media audience that we can get together as a community,” said NBC News President Steve Capus in a video interview with Lost Remote (below). “Then it becomes not just a one-way street, but a two-way street, with people engaged, people commenting.” Watch the clip below for Capus’ thoughts about how social media played a key role in the summit:
On air – Social Media (Twitter, Facebook posts and comments on educationnation.com) was integrated in the “lower third” of the screen in a non-“copy and paste” form for first time. An actual integration with the platforms was created through the control room making it more of a real part of the production and programming
At the event – The summit team was focused on social media from far in advance (e.g. Twitter usernames of panelists and guests were included in all official documents. A fun, bright bloggers/tweeters lounge was designed in the main conference area featuring a screen the curved at the end with tweets.
Partners – NBC News worked with Mass Relevance to power everything. According to the summit team, “they’re a great partner and we hope to keep working with them in the future.”
Successes – There were over 20,000 posts on Twitter (using #EducationNation or @educationnation), on the Education Nation Facebook and comments on EducationNation.com.
Trendrr’s chart (above) shows the spikes and reach from their Teacher Town Hall by hashtag, which aired on MSNBC on Sunday.