Staff from the World Wide Fund for Nature's (WWF) South African headquarters arrived at the Grand Daddy Hotel in Long Street, Cape Town, on Friday 21 February for an interactive workshop on social media.
With laptops and cellphones in hand, they were ready to tweet, like and +1 their way through the workshop, facilitated by Flow CEO Tara Turkington, Cape Town manager Roy Barford, and Flowstars Stuart Buchanan and Andrea Weiss.
Andrea has already spent a lot of time with the panda people over recent months, as have some other Flowstars, but last week it was time for WWF staff to spend a day out of the office learning about social media with some other members of the Flow team.
The course entailed an introduction to social media and its importance; "Twitter 101" for beginners and "Twitter 201" for more experienced tweeters; a brief look at other emerging social media trends; a lesson on ways to measure success (and other analytics); and plenty of interactive games, debate and teamwork.
The Grand Daddy also made for a great place to enjoy a few drinks together at the end of the day – and after hard work from the Flow team and a lot of learning from the WWF team, they were well deserved!
WWF's Pedzi Gozo said she found the workshop "really valuable – we should be leading the organisation towards embracing social media, and this was the first tangible step towards finding a way to do that. Our involvement has often been ad hoc before, but this workshop helps to improve that."
Deborah Weber said: "This workshop has created a space that we don't often find in our working day – to spend time exploring social media, new ideas and new thinking."
Janine Basson said: "I found the workshop very useful, especially the way the discussion was facilitated and encouraged. I appreciated how everything we learned was always related back to the conservation space, which is where we operate."
Roxanne Abrahams said: "Having worked in social media before, the workshop helped to supplement what I already knew. It was also a nice confidence boost – maybe I do know what I'm talking about! There was a good balance of information and practical sessions, opportunities to be creative, and time to brainstorm."
Danielle Gordon said: "I liked how the workshop focused on everyday ways of using social media, and reinforced the message that these tools are an extension of what we do, not separate from it."
Thank you to all the staff of WWF who participated in the workshop, and to the Grand Daddy for providing a great venue.
