I was raised on General Motors cars; that was my father’s choice of wheels. My first car was a Cadillac–an 8-year-old one that my dad, an automobile dealer, bought for my 16th birthday. it was a behemoth V8 gas guzzler, and I loved to drive it. My current car is a 2002 Ford Focus wagon I bought when it had just over 20,000 miles. It happened to be the best car in my budget range when I went shopping, and it’s been an economic, efficient ride. I figure my late father would forgive me for venturing outside of the GM family.

I’ve been paying attention to Ford’s marketing and PR efforts since my friend Scott Monty was hired to lead their social media efforts. Scott was one of the first people I followed on Twitter, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting him in person a few times.

So I was really intrigued that Ford chose to reveal the new 2011 Explorer, not at a car show, but on Facebook, in conjunction with a live unveiling in Herald Square in New York City and in these additional locations: Toronto, Washington, DC, Miami, Chicago, Dearborn, Dallas, Denver, and Los Angeles.

Check out the Ford Explorer Facebook page, which served as the hub for all the day’s activities and a repository for the reveal videos. Scott was in New York, “manning the Interwebz” as he tweeted.

I watched a few of the videos and learned about the design and safety features of the new Explorer, including inflatable seatbelts for rear-seat passengers. That’s a great feature, and I hope it’s adopted by other automakers.

Oh, and I also registered in the sweepstakes drawing to win one of the new Explorers. Ford had announced that if they got at least 30,000 fans … er, “likes” … on the Facebook page, they would give away an Explorer. They went well over that mark last week, and the page now has over 53,000 likes.

It looks like nearly every post on the Facebook page has gotten over 100 comments, so there has been a lot of engagement with both fans and detractors. I’ll be curious to see reports on the results of the Facebook-driven launch.

What do you think about yesterday’s Explorer launch: was it simply social media hype, or does this signal a new type of interactive marketing event to not only reach but engage the masses?

More from Every Dot Connects

• Social Media: Too Much of a Good Thing?
• Cause Marketing: H2Orange bottled water launch
• Our ooVoo Debut: From Connections to Community

Please indulge this off-topic post. It’s an important day for me personally, World Sjogren’s Day.

Sjogren’s (pronounced “show-grins”) is a chronic autoimmune disorder that causes white blood cells to attack the body’s moisture-producing glands. Some four million Americans, 90 percent of them women, are living with Sjogren’s. I’m one of them.

There is no cure. Symptoms can range from mild to debilitating, and the best you can do is learn to manage them.

What’s it like living with Sjogren’s? Well, just imagine ….

• that you are constantly wiping grit from your eyes, and eye drops afford scant relief
• that you can’t swallow foods like crackers because you don’t have enough saliva
• that your dry mouth causes rapid tooth decay and you make frequent visits to the dentist
• that your dry nose predisposes you to sinus infections, nose bleeds and respiratory problems
• that no matter how much water you drink, you can’t replenish your body’s moisture
• that your skin is so dry you use night cream under your makeup
• that you feel constantly fatigued and the doctor simply chalks it up to depression
• that you have episodes of joint and muscle pain with no explanation
• that for days on end you feel as if you have the flu, except you don’t
• that you have good days and bad days, but you can’t predict when they’ll occur
• that you’re sent from doctor to doctor for more than a decade before being diagnosed, and even then specialists disagree with each other

I don’t have to imagine any of these things; I live them.

Yet I’m fortunate. Although this is a systemic disorder, none of my major organs have been affected. I’m still mobile, still able to work, and have never been hospitalized due to Sjogren’s.

Click the graphic below to enlarge; it’s from the Sjogren’s Syndrome Foundation site, where you’ll find much valuable information for patients and healthcare providers.

More from Every Dot Connects

• Blogging Basics: How to start a blog, and whether you’ll ever make money from it
• My ooVoo Day In The Pink (Political Edition)
• Does Your Church Use New Media?

My friends Sheila Scarborough and Becky McCray are about to launch a membership site where travel and tourism professionals can learn all about social media. If you’re in destination marketing, you couldn’t be in better hands. These two ladies are true experts–and they are both great teachers.

Don’t wait until the September 9 launch. Surf over to Tourism Currents and sign up for email updates before the site goes live.

Sheila and Becky will feature tourism-specific training materials, a moderated forum, exclusive interviews with social media and tourism experts and round table Q&A sessions. The site will be a unique resource for Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs,) Chambers of Commerce, PR professionals who work in tourism, heritage/preservation organizations, agritourism, festival planners, or anyone involved in destination marketing.

Read more about it:
Sheila’s Guide to the Good Stuff
School’s in Session: Social Media Learning Resources for Tourism

BEST WISHES FOR A SUPER SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH!

More from Every Dot Connects

• Podcast: Connie and Sheila talk social media
• Social Media Blog Carnival – Your Best Shots
• On vacation

What happens when friendly competitors start talking? Sometimes it leads to huge, huge news.

The communications consulting arm of Every Dot Connects has been acquired by Austin start-up New Media Lab. Please read the official news release for more details.

In the year I’ve know Benn and Lani Rosales, I’ve come to respect their knowledge of social media as well as their business acumen. So, as you can imagine, I’m excited at the prospect of collaborating with them. Our first event as a team will be the New Media Collaborative on May 15.

In the meantime, we will still be conducting the Every Dot Connects workshops scheduled, including our first-ever Twitter and Facebook sessions, in addition to a joint workshop especially for nonprofits and associations with Michele Schwartz of The Nonprofit Advisors. Check the sidebar for upcoming dates.

As with any merger or acquisition, there will be a transition period–and, I’m sure, some bumps along the way. But I will still blog here at Every Dot Connects, and we’ll keep our Facebook page updated for those who have already attended our workshops or just want to “hang out” with us online.

My sister, Laurie Reece, and our association management services remain unaffected by the acquisition.

Thank you for the many messages of congratulations and support on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere. I hope you’ll stick with us as we continue to grow the community here in the Live Social Media Capital of the World.

It’s that time of year again, when the tech universe is abuzz with the digital creative delights of the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference in Austin, Texas.

Since I live in the Austin metro area and this is my third “South by,” I thought I’d update last year’s post on why SXSWi is like Disney World and revisit the lure of conferences.

Just yesterday at Jelly Coworking, I discussed the five geeky days of craziness with City of Round Rock communications guy Brooks Bennett.

This will be his first SXSWi and he’s really psyched about it, but also a bit overwhelmed by the barrage of offerings.

Here’s the advice I gave him….

• Forget about seeing everything. Heck, forget about seeing half of it!  There are the big keynote speakers, a crazy-huge number of panels, the smaller Core Conversations (I’m speaking at one with writer Pam Mandel, about travel blogging) plus book readings on the Adobe Day Stage (where I heard then-unknown Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Workweek speak in 2007,) early evening salon discussions and my personal “secret” favorite that often has big names in a small setting, the Studio SX discussions in the northeast corner of the Exhibition Hall.  There are hang-out lounges and parties galore, both official and “unofficial.” This goes on for five days – you’ll be fried.
• Pick everything that sounds good, and weed it all out later. Here’s what I do – I go through the online schedule and say, “Yes, Yes, Yes” to everything that sounds good and every speaker that I know and/or like.  I don’t worry that I’m double-, triple- and quadruple-booked for events. I print the whole thing out (yes, print – paper always boots up & never needs a power outlet or WiFi) and stuff Beast Schedule in my purse. Each morning of the conference, I do ruthless triage to pick the happenings that it would KILL me to miss, saying a fond farewell to the rest. It really sorts itself pretty clearly as the conference wears on;  some people hardly make any panels, but their whole day is a schmoozefest in the hallways and lounges. Whatever works for you!
• Loud, packed parties are overrated. Networking and socializing are not.  Look, I’m not a big party girl if it means jammed, loud rooms full of people that I don’t know.  I assure you, however, that I get plenty of fun time at South by – I’m socializing in smaller gaggles, with lots of folks I don’t know but a few that I do, hanging out in places where we can actually find a seat.  Many people do the same thing – go to the “big” parties, discover they’re not all that insanely fun, go back out on the sidewalk and regroup, run into someone from the day’s panels and all go off together to have a civilized beer and proper geek bonding. (OK, you want a nice bar? The Driskill Hotel, since 1886. Take that, Sixth Street lemmings.)
• The basics – bring business cards, check that your cell phone has unlimited texting, pack a couple of energy bars, bring a water bottle, comfy shoes, power cords. It is truly an endurance event, but I mean that in the most positive way.  While we’re talking basics, there’s good BBQ right around the corner from the Convention Center: Iron Works BBQ at 100 Red River.

I hope to run into any and all of you during South by Southwest – I’m @SheilaS on Twitter, Connie Reece is @conniereece and Jennifer Navarrete is @epodcaster (don’t forget @sxswi – unofficial tweets – and @sxsw – official tweets.) See you there!

More good advice:

• Attend Friday’s How to Rawk SXSW: The Basics
• A guide to SXSW Interactive networking, from the Austin American-Statesman (and the Statesman‘s latest Austin Dining Guide.)
• The SXSW09 PBWiki.
• SXSW Interactive survival tips, from The Adventures of CindyLi.com
• SXSW Baby! especially the forums.
• The SXSW09 Insider’s Guide Ning group.
• Kent Brewster’s Things to Remember About SXSW

(If this post was helpful for you, please vote it up on Kirtsy, or Stumble it on StumbleUpon. The Digg and Delicious links are just below the post as well. Thanks very much!)

Here’s the background, an AP story I read in the Chicago Tribune: “Doctor [sic] try legal restraints on patients to prevent online criticism.” (Hat tip, @ColonelTribune on Twitter)

For a fee, a company called Medical Justice will provide doctors with a standardized waiver form. Patients who sign the form agree not to post any online comments about the doctor or their treatment. In other words, doctors want a gag order to prevent patients from publishing any criticism. Looks like they finally understand that, as consumers of health care, patients have a voice now–and they’re not afraid to use it.

I put the following poll out on Twitter and Facebook, asking if people would sign such a waiver. The poll is admittedly unscientific, and somewhat predictable given the people likely to answer it. Still, it’s notable that not one person said they would sign the waiver. The one category I think may be underrepresented is “I just scan medical forms so probably wouldn’t notice it.” How closely do you read the numerous forms medical offices routinely ask you to sign?

My sister, who works with doctors as executive director of a medical specialty society, said, “The silly thing is, you couldn’t share something GOOD about a doctor if you signed such a document. How very short-sighted.”

Below the poll results is a screenshot of the responses I received on Twitter. What are your thoughts? Would you sign such a waiver? What are the implications for our health care system?

Sheila Scarborough and I are honored to be among the five Social Media Mavens profiled in the current issue of Austin Woman magazine, a free monthly publication distributed in over 800 locations across the greater Austin area. With SXSW in town this month, the magazine’s cover story is about Austin music legend Marcia Ball, with a special section on social media.

I think I’m even more excited that another one of the mavens, Lisa Goddard, attended the first-ever workshop we conducted back in June of last year–just a few days after CEO David Davenport kicked off a blog for the Capital Area Food Bank, which Lisa serves as advocacy and online marketing director. Since then Lisa and the food bank team have not just gotten the blog off the ground, they have successfully integrated social media into a number of their fund-raising and awareness efforts, and even have 11 employees on Twitter.

Read the profiles of all five Social Media Mavens, and visit their Twitter pages and blogs:

Lisa Goddard, AW p. 58, @Lisa_Goddard, Capital Area Food Bank of Texas blog

Leslie Mock, AW p. 60, @LeslieMock, LifeFlipping

Connie Reece, AW p. 62, @conniereece, Every Dot Connects, Tumblr Weeds

Sheila Scarborough, AW p. 64, @SheilaS, Every Dot Connects, Family Travel Logue

Laura Thomas, AW p. 66, @LPT, Laura P. Thomas, This Mommy Gig

On Sunday, March 15, an overall winner will be announced at an awards show and party at Ballet Austin downtown. It’s open to the public, and I hope that some of my friends who will be in Austin for SXSW will be able to join the celebration. Tickets are on sale now for the event, which will include a cocktail party and an awards show: https://www.tickets.balletaustin.org/public/

I’d like to thank the people who nominated me, and those who took the time to add a comment to my nominations page. Reading the words of my social media peers has been humbling and gratifying. You always like to think you’re making a positive impact; seldom, however, do you have the opportunity to know that first-hand.

I’d also like to thank the Statesman for not turning this into a popularity contest. While the judges will take the comments into consideration when choosing the overall winner, that person will be selected solely on merit and not on how many votes they can garner or how much traffic they drive to the Statesman’s Web site. That’s very refreshing.

To view the profiles of all 25 winners, click here: Texas Social Media Award Winners

Our client Homeaway is sponsoring a Getaway contest, a dream vacation worth up to $5,000, to the blogger, videographer or photographer who creates the most compelling answer to this question: Why do you need a getaway, and where would you like to spend it?

Oy, I wish I could enter this contest. The whole time Sheila Scarborough and I have been helping the HomeAway team put this contest together, my imagination has run wild. Travel is something I rarely get to do–for pleasure, that is; I’ve done a fair bit of travel this year to speak at conferences.

But a real vacation? The kind without succumbing to the tuneful ring of a cell phone or squelching the urge to check email every hour? Haven’t had one of those in five long years. A day off here and there, maybe a long weekend, that’s it.

Oh, and sick days. Had quite a few of those. 2008 has been a year of struggle health-wise: I’ve battled an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, undiagnosed autoimmune disorder, and a back injury. Then there was selling the family homestead and moving my mom out of the house where she’d lived for 38 years into a house with me and my sister. Combining 3 households took 2 estate sales, 2 garage sales, and trips to auction houses and consignment stores as well as donations to the Salvation Army.

How’s that for a sob story for why I need a getaway? Well, at least you can understand why I’ve been daydreaming about where I’d go for my dream vacation.

First choice: a sweet little château in the south of France.

I studied at the Université de Clermont-Ferrand the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, and I have always wanted to go back to France someday. Here’s a lovely place I found on the HomeAway site–a charming little castle (in fact, that’s its name) with 7 bedrooms and 5 baths. (Not too big; I wouldn’t want to appear pretentious!)

The Chateau de Charme is a 12th-century castle. Totally restored and modernized, it offers luxury accomodation, inlcuding a private swimming pool. Situated in a rural hilly area where the famous ‘Charolais beef’ is bred and offering panoramic views, the château is 5 minutes away from the medieval village of Charlieu. Many vineyards are nearby–the Beaujolais region is just 30 minutes by car. The local wine is Les Côtes Roannaises.

Second choice: a stylish San Francisco house with panoramic views

A U.S. city I’ve always wanted to visit is San Francisco. HomeAway’s site features vacation rentals from Nob Hill homes to Victorian apartments in Pacific Heights and even a Sausalito houseboat. But the one that captured my eye was this stylish, 3-story, architect-designed house with two killer features: panoramic views of downtown San Francisco as well as the Bay, and a Steinway grand piano in the living room. A Steinway grand–hello!

This home, high on Potrero Hill, would be a perfect spot for a writer’s retreat. I feel creative just looking at the photos! The owner, who lives here when not traveling, says: “There are sweeping views of downtown San Francisco and the Bay from almost every room. The large, open living room has a dramatic marble fireplace, an award-winning staircase, antique Japanese furniture, original art and sculpture, a Steinway grand piano, and a soaring cathedral ceiling with sunlight streaming through the two double French doors, and a huge skylight. The master bedroom, which occupies the entire third floor, has a Japanese-style bath, a wall of glass framing a magnificent view of San Francisco, and a private redwood deck.”

It even has wireless Internet throughout the house. And, this vacation rental is under $3,000 per week–which means that HomeAway would give me $2,000 cash to cover travel expenses!

Oh, wait. I can’t enter the contest. *big sigh*

But you can. Where do you want to go on your dream vacation? You’ve got 120,000+ vacation rental properties to choose from.

I hope you’ll give it a try with a blog post (350 words); a YouTube video (two minutes); or a set of photos on Flickr (up to 10 photos w/ captions of less than 20 words each). You can find more information here: How to Enter the Contest. Just tell us (and the world) why you need a getaway, and where you’d like to spend it. Entries will be accepted through January 7 and voting begins January 8.

If you win, all I ask is that you send me a postcard so I can live vicariously.

More from Every Dot Connects

• Blogging Basics: How to start a blog, and whether you’ll ever make money from it
• 6 ways to improve your destination marketing (and why you’re toast if you don’t)
• Why this travel writer is going on a tech tour in China

As a news junkie, and one with an interest in global terrorism, I was glued to my computer monitor for a large part of the almost 60-hour siege at the historic Taj Hotel in Mumbai and the related terror attacks. I had NDTV from New Delhi in one browser window; CNN/IBN streaming in another.

And, of course, I was closely following the conversation on Twitter. In the process, I learned some new Twitter tricks to share with you here.

1. Advanced Search Leads to Eyewitnesses

With a huge volume of tweets adopting #mumbai as a hashtag, it was hard to sift the wheat from the chaff–or as my tech friends would say, the noise to signal ratio was way too high. Many people were tweeting and retweeting news reports, some accurate, some dubious. But buried in the avalanche of 140-character messages were some eyewitness reports, and I learned a new way to mine the nuggets: advanced search.

Go to http://search.twitter.com — now, see the small type to the right of the Search button that says Advanced Search? Click on it. Or, you could just go straight to http://search.twitter.com/advanced.

I used this feature to search for Twitter users located within 15 km of Mumbai. Voilà! Not all of these people were eyewitnesses–some were reporting what they were hearing on local news or from friends–but I quickly found three people who were nearby and tweeting about what they were seeing and hearing first-hand. They were also taking lots of photos, which soon found their way on to Flickr.

CNN found them too because before long, @vinu, @arunshanbhag and @dina were being interviewed via telephone for international newscasts, and the following day several mainstream newspapers quoted them as well.

Click the thumbnail at left to see a screenshot of the Advanced Search form with the input parameters. Alternatively, you could use these search operators to get the same results:

#mumbai near:Mumbai within:15km

2.  Twitter Detective: How to Spot the Trolls

After a few hours the #mumbai hashtag was infected with a number of people taking advantage of the opportunity to spread their propaganda. Suddenly we were hearing that the Mumbai terror attacks had been perpetrated by the Mossad (the Jewish conspiracy theory that routinely gets trotted out ); that all Muslims are terrorists (ditto); or that the attacks were the handiwork of Hindus, etc., etc. Some tweeters were more subtle but still had an obvious agenda.

It was interesting to see how many of these trolls had created Twitter accounts strictly for that purpose. Click through to the profile and you could see that they were following zero people and had zero followers, or a handful at most, and that the oldest updates had begun after the terror attacks took place.

The obvious trolls I blocked, in the hope that if enough people did that, their account would be suspended for unusual activity. Additionally, I found that you could eliminate these users from your advanced Twitter search by the use of the minus operator: i.e. #mumbai -trollname1 -trollname2

However, the list of people I wanted to block from the discussion got too long, so I just waded through their wretched rhetoric to read what interested me.

3. Tweetchat: Like a Chat Room for Hashtags

Brooks Bennett, whom I met as a fellow panelist for an event sponsored by the Texas Public Relations Association, created a new tool I enjoyed using to follow the #mumbai discussion. After we had discussed Twitter and hashtags at the TPRA conference, Brooks went home and thought, “What if you could have a Twitter chat room based on one topic?” … and then he created just that over the weekend. I had the fun of demoing it to the American Heart Association just two days later. (I’m telling you, things move fast in this social media world!)

Tweetchat turns a hashtag into a Twitter-style chat room. It’s just like Twitter Search in the way it displays a stream of each post that uses a particular hashtag. Unlike Twitter Search, the page autorefreshes (yay!). Plus, you can post to Twitter directly from Tweetchat–no switching between browser windows or applications. Additionally, when you post a Twitter update from Tweetchat, it automatically appends the hashtag for you, so you don’t have to worry about typos.

To use Tweetchat, go to http://tweetchat.com and log into Twitter with your username and password (not stored by the Tweetchat server; simply used to authenticate your account with the Twitter API). The “room” name is the hashtag you’re following. You can also send someone a direct link by using a format like this: http://tweetchat.com/room/mumbai

UPDATE: The original version of this post incorrectly formatted the above link with a hashtag; it is not needed in the URL.

Brooks recently made some tweaks so that links now open in a new tab, and he fixed a bug that truncated messages that included an ampersand. I’m sure he would appreciate feedback when you try Tweetchat, so ping him on Twitter @BrooksBennett.

Those are my recent discoveries about Twitter. What new tips or tricks have you learned?