Award-winning social media conference, with a culinary twist, returns to Penticton

Penticton, BC: Eat.Drink.Tweet., an event that spawned more than 2.5 million hits on Twitter last March and led to its founder getting a tattoo to mark the achievement, returns to the Penticton campus of Okanagan College from February 17-19.

Eat.Drink.Tweet. is a unique conference about social media that combines education with “IRL” — in real life — networking opportunities featuring craft beer, BC wine, and gourmet food. This year, the gourmet goodies will be provided by Penticton’s Cannery Brewing, the wineries of the Naramata Bench, and Kelowna’s Okanagan Street Food.

“My goal with the original Eat.Drink.Tweet. was to educate people on the power of social media as a marketing and communications tool,” says Allison Markin, principal of All She Wrote Consulting, the marketing firm that established Eat.Drink.Tweet. in partnership with Okanagan College in 2011. “The event itself, as a bonus, ended up being a social media phenomenon all its own.”

Since the first event in March, 2011, Markin has gone on to host smaller EDT events throughout British Columbia, winning the Thompson-Okanagan Tourism Association‘s award for Social Media Initiative, and sharing a prestigious International LERN Award for marketing with Okanagan College, beating out a number of international entries from post-secondary programs around the world.

At the inaugural event, Markin posted on Twitter that she would get a tattoo if the Twitter hashtag “#eatdrinktweet” trended on Twitter in Canada; it did, for three days straight, resulting in much online attention across North America, reaching as far away as Germany. Markin, who teaches social media classes at Okanagan College, was true to her word, and got the Eat.Drink.Tweet. logo — a stylized fork, wine glass and computer mouse — tattooed on her ankle.

While in Virginia this past summer to successfully negotiate, on behalf of Penticton & Wine Country Tourism, bringing the 2013 North American Wine Bloggers Conference to Penticton, Markin was recognized by the tattoo.

“Several times bloggers from regions such as California, Chicago and Texas came up to me at the 2012 Wine Bloggers Conference and exclaimed, ‘you’re that Eat.Drink.Tweet. girl!’ which was somewhat bizarre, but also very flattering,” says Markin.

This year’s Eat.Drink.Tweet. is portioned into several sections:  a pre-conference day on Friday just on blogging led by one of Canada’s top bloggers, Lorraine Murphy of Raincoaster.com; a networking event on Friday night featuring keynote speaker Rob Duncan, who will present Work together to win! Why collaborating with the competition can be the smartest thing you do., followed immediately by the live Twitter wine tasting; and a full day of seminars on Saturday, with a half day on Sunday. Seminar topics will include sessions on Facebook marketing, QR codes, Twitter, YouTube, social media management and more.

“This is a great learning opportunity for any small to medium sized business wanting to begin or improve their social media presence, and the sessions are designed with beginners in mind,” says Markin.

Registration is through Eventbrite; last year Eat.Drink.Tweet. was a sellout.