I think it's possible to plug Miami in the hashtag, but since this
thing has got a life of it's own, shaping it any further seems really
out of our control now.  And may be dying down, there's less activity
on it this morning so far, but perhaps US devs haven't woken up yet on
the West Coast.

There is a weird issue of branding here -- other people are now using
the characters "IMS211" to mean something that's pretty much
completely divorced from Miami or even my class.  Speaking of which, I
don't think I mentioned http://ims211.com in my previous emails -- a
developer somewhere in Idaho, I think, set it up?  I suppose we could
look at all of this as problematic, but I'm not sure it's worth the
effort to, as it's really out of our hands.  The more we try to rein
in that discussion or overtly turn it into a promo thing for our
program, I fear, the more it will tick off people who got excited
about it.  Glenn might have some opinions on this, as he's teaching
about similar issues in social media marketing this semester...

As this has stretched on the last two days, I'm starting to feel that
this hashtag business should just be a call for all of us to be much
more active within social media spaces like Twitter, simply because
you never know when something you do will accidentally "hit" like
this.  It's less about using Twitter as a "tool" -- frankly, I think
it's terrible as a PR pushing device, and never follow folks who use
it this way.  The best way to use Twitter and gain a bunch of
followers, in my opinion, is through actively engaging with the
communities of folks who are using it daily.  Think of it as a very
public instant messenger rather than microblogging.  That's really why
I think this hashtag took off, because it provided an easy and quick
venue for people to connect with one another and start conversations.

Hopefully we get some collateral benefits from this, but at the very
least, it's bringing some attention to our courses.  :-)

--sean

Sean C. Duncan
   Armstrong Professor of Interactive Media Studies
   Assistant Professor, School of Education, Health, and Society &
   Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies
   Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056
   [log in to unmask] / se4n.org



On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 8:05 AM, Grace, Lindsay Mr. <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is awesome! Any chance we can steer this back toward Miami or the
> phrase Interactive Media Studies.  It's taken on a life of it's own, which
> is good, except that life is its own.
>
>
> On 4/6/11 7:34 PM, "Duncan, Sean Christopher Dr." <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> Seriously, everyone, this is just not ending...
>>
>> The Twitter hashtag #ims211 has continued into a second day, and is
>> still going strong.  If you Google "ims211," it's now listed as
>> everything from "a venue for game developers to talk" to a hot topic
>> of discussion on Twitter in San Francisco at one point.  Hundreds of
>> people, from folks at big and/or great game studios (EA, Activision,
>> BioWare, Treyarch, Double Fine, Zynga, etc.) have tweeted on the
>> hashtag, and there's well over 2800 separate tweets contributed to it
>> since yesterday morning.  Several studios have tweeted that they have
>> jobs, and some recruiters have tweeted at me directly.  I'll be
>> following up with them all once this calms down, to see if we can
>> build some relationships with them.
>>
>> But, I email you all now with the weirdest thing -- someone's
>> "designed" an #ims211 t-shirt:
>>
>> http://ims211.spreadshirt.com/
>>
>> Someone in Sweden has decided to commemorate this hashtag based on one
>> of our course listings with a shirt, donating his cut ($2.10 for every
>> $15) to charity.  There's now a new hashtag, #charityshirt, that's
>> evolved from the original #ims211 hashtag.
>>
>> I guess I know how Lindsay and I will introduce ourselves at GDC next
>> year.  "Hi, we're from the University that started IMS."  This is an
>> amazing, crazy thing.
>>
>> --sean
>>
>> Sean C. Duncan
>>    Armstrong Professor of Interactive Media Studies
>>    Assistant Professor, School of Education, Health, and Society &
>>    Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies
>>    Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056
>>    [log in to unmask] / se4n.org
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 12:31 PM, Grace, Lindsay Mr. <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> Agreed, very cool!
>>> --
>>> Lindsay D. Grace
>>> Armstrong Professor of Fine Arts
>>> Miami University School of Fine Arts
>>> Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies
>>>
>>> 206 Hiestand Hall
>>> Oxford, Ohio, 45056
>>>
>>> http://www.LGrace.com
>>>
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: AIMS All [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Todd Edwards
>>> [[log in to unmask]]
>>> Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2011 11:32 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: The Power of Twitter?
>>>
>>> Amazing!
>>>
>>> On Apr 5, 2011 11:27 AM, "Sean Duncan"
>>> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> Today we were talking about gaming communities in IMS211 (Game
>>>> Studies), and one of the students made the argument that the world of
>>>> game development and game fandom is highly blurred these days due to
>>>> the rise of the internet and the low barriers for entry into
>>>> conversation with game devs, journalists, scholars. I thought I'd be
>>>> Mr. Clever and, while he was speaking, tweeted this to my followers:
>>>>
>>>> http://twitter.com/#!/scd/status/55271465460838401
>>>>
>>>> I said: "Hey, if you work in games, can you tweet hi to my class
>>>> (#ims211)? I wanna make a point about Twitter and the game dev world."
>>>> The point being that everyone is highly connected via Twitter within
>>>> this industry, and that fans and creatives have an unprecedented means
>>>> of interaction within Twitter. One or two people tweeted back on that
>>>> hashtag immediately, but over the course of the past hour it's...
>>>> exploded. Check out this hashtag search:
>>>>
>>>> http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23ims211
>>>>
>>>> As I write this, probably 100 tweets within just past hour, from folks
>>>> ranging from San Francisco to Germany to Brazil, from the president of
>>>> the International Game Developer's Association to BioWare to game
>>>> design faculty elsewhere. From folks just saying hi, to folks
>>>> advertising that they're hiring game design students. I'm dumbfounded
>>>> and humbled that my little tweet got this kind of response -- it's
>>>> quite amazing. I've gathered a new 20-30 followers in the past hour.
>>>>
>>>> I don't know if others experience this kind of community using social
>>>> media in their own branches of interactive media, but there's no
>>>> reason why they can't. My students were amazed by this, and it's
>>>> something that we can easily use to connect students -- on the fly! --
>>>> with practitioners and scholars out there. And job opportunities,
>>>> potentially. So, consider this a plea to get on Twitter and try this
>>>> out yourself, if you're not already on it, it can be an amazing way to
>>>> connect our students with the larger world.
>>>>
>>>> --sean
>>>>
>>>> Sean C. Duncan
>>>>    Armstrong Professor of Interactive Media Studies
>>>>    Assistant Professor, School of Education, Health, and Society &
>>>>    Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies
>>>>    Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056
>>>>    [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> /
>>>> se4n.org<http://se4n.org>
>>>
>
>