Genomics Blog

Canada's Tourism Commission has set up outdoor 8′ x 10′ interactive Twitter walls in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City. The idea behind the really big tweets is to show Americans how much fun Canadians can be by the way we tweet about our country.
Whether you are in one of these cities or not, if you’re an American you can enter a contest for a free trip up north by following @keep_exploring ( that is how names are managed in Twitter by the way and followers and following is the key to be a success on Twitter) , and replying to the account with your dream Canadian vacation. The Twitter board will display the postings directly related to the promotion and other posts found through specific Canadian search terms.
Here’s the promo video put together by the Canadian Tourism Commission:





So, still think Twitter doesn't have a roll to play in the real world? The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada does because they use twitter regularly. Alberta's Minister of Education posts his own 140 character updates. The U.S Military uses it extensively as does the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (they even have their own blog at http://blog.tsa.gov/ ) .
We use it at Genome Alberta to both follow influencers in the biotech field and we in turn are followed by a solid list of people connected wth government, industry, academia, public relations, and media. Why not follow us as @mikesgene ? 
Here's a small sampling of what has been happening on Twitter in the last couple of weeks:

Almost 600 people or organizations follow us on Twitter and we in turn keep track of just over 100 similar Twitter accounts.
The range we manage to cover in those we follow or those who track our 140 character posts is chosen to help spread awareness of who Genome Alberta is and what we do and includes:

• PR Professionals
• Science writers
• Mainstream media
• Biotech consultants
• Local event companies or people
• Corporate Twitter accounts for biotech or life science companies

Most of our Twitter connections are in Canada and the U.S. but we also have a good overseas following in the U.K. and Australia. Every 2 weeks we like to share some of the hi-lites we've come across on Twitter. The links have been checked to make sure you're not going into the land of spam and we like to feature the relevant, in some cases the irreverent, the interesting, and some that are there, well, just because.
Be sure to visit them, follow them and tell them @mikesgene sent you: