Indianapolis | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

I’m taking three days off for travel this week, and look forward to a big virtual event on Tuesday and interacting in real life on Wednesday and Thursday at some interesting healthcare social media events.

On Tuesday, I’m going to be in Chicago for some meetings and then to present a Webinar for Ragan Communications based on our social media experience at Mayo Clinic. Registration is FREE and open until noon CDT on Tuesday, August 4, so there is still time to sign up if you’d like to join. The Webcast runs from 2-3 p.m. on Tuesday. I will be tweeting using the #mayoragan hashtag.
On Wednesday, I will be in Indianapolis for the Eli Lilly Web 2.0 Summit. I understand there will be about 20 outside presenters for this event, which is for Lilly employees, so I look forward to an opportunity to meet some folks face-to-face with whom I’ve previously only conversed via Twitter. Not sure what the Twitter hashtag will be, but if you follow me on Twitter (always a good idea!) you’ll discover it soon enough.
On Thursday, I’m in Omaha for a breakfast with the American Marketing Association’s healthcare interest group. Contact Megan O’Dea if you want more info.

The interest in social media among healthcare communicators, marketers and medical staff is extremely high right now, as this story from Forbes.com indicates. For example, I understand that more than 1,500 people have signed up for the Ragan Webinar. They aren’t all necessarily involved in healthcare; some may be from other industries. So, I’m looking forward to that “broadcast” opportunity to reach a large and widely dispersed group, but the in-person meetings will also be great, allowing more in-depth discussions.

And speaking of in-person discussions, if you’re involved in health care and interested in social media, I hope you’ll consider attending the social media summit Mayo Clinic is hosting and co-sponsoring with Ragan in October. It will be on our Mayo Clinic Scottsdale campus. I’m excited about the faculty we’ve assembled and I’m confident it’s going to be a great couple of days in which we can all learn from each other.

I’ve written some posts over the last couple of years about my kids being involved in Bible Bowl, such as this one from 2007 and this from 2008. My daughter Ruthie, who has been the “franchise player” for the team, just graduated from high school, so this year’s national competition in Indianapolis is her last.

Bible Bowl is a team game, but most teams typically have one key player who wins the toss-up questions. That’s Ruthie. So when I say “Ruthie won” or “Ruthie had a tough time in last year’s round robin” it’s because so much of the team’s performance depends on winning toss-up questions, and also because she is the hardest-working and most dedicated member of her team. Her brother Joe and sister Rebekah are key contributors to the Austin team, and it’s been great to have them all doing this together (Bekah also graduated in June; Joe will be in 9th grade next year.)

During the first couple of days of the competition the teams play a round robin format to determine seeding for the double elimination competition. The teams are grouped into pods or pools of 12 based on how they have done earlier in the year, and then those teams all play each other, and are seeded for the double elimination based on their pool record.

In some ways the round robin doesn’t really matter, as Ruthie showed last year. Her team lost every game in round robin, was seeded 12th, and still came back to finish fifth in the double elimination tournament. She’s kind of streaky that way.

This year she’s off to a much better start, with a 6-2 record and tied for first in the round robin, with three games tomorrow afternoon. Two of those games are against the teams with which Austin is tied, so it’s nice that she can just focus on the games she’s playing instead of depending on someone else losing.

Of course, the most important thing is that through the competition the kids are learning a lot and memorizing lots of scripture. But it’s nice to have Ruthie doing well in the competition since she has worked so hard.

Bible Bowl has been our family vacation for the last couple of years, as we went to Kansas City in 2007 and Atlanta in 2008. We’re glad to have my parents joining us again this year and Lisa’s dad attending for the first time. And a big highlight is that my daughter Rachel and her husband Kyle were able to come for the weekend with our granddaughter, Evelyn.

So for the next few days, until Wednesday, my Twitter stream will be mostly personal. If you want to follow the Bible Bowl tweets, you can use this hashtag: #BibleBowl09. Looks like I’m the only one using it right now, but let’s see if we can get that to change.

But now it’s time to stop blogging about vacation and resume my experience of it.

Here’s hoping everyone is having a great Independence Day!

Tag: Indianapolis

Bible Bowl 2009