#eventprofs The story Behind the Hashtag

#eventprofs has become the most popular and recognizable hashtag for event planners, meeting professionals, and other industry professionals. Did you now that it was the second community established on Twitter?

Why I Started the Eventprofs hive on beBee

• Eventprofs Hive (name changed to Global Network for Event Planners Hive)
  

Hives are to beBee what Groups are to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+. After being active on LinkedIn for over 12 years and managing the largest community for event professionals, I was immediately struck by 4 things here at beBee:

• the visibility of hive (group) content as you can share the same content on 3 hives and the comments all flow into one stream
• the organic reach of blog content (honey), there are no artificial caps to their distribution unlike LinkedIn Publisher or Facebook Page Posts
• the extent of engagement
• ease of group management

I have never seen anything like it on any other platform. So I grabbed the space and set up the hive. Even with a small number of members, we are seeing a level of engagement that surpasses many LinkedIn groups because content is visible.

Now the thriving eventprofs community has a place where it can engage here on beBee. To make it work, just post a short title in the form of a question, include a photo, or the title of and a link to an article or post and away you go. You can share ever buzz (status update) or honey (blog post) with eventprofs and 2 other hives.

#eventprofs From Hashtag to a Community

Launched in 2009 by Lara McCulloch, the #eventprofs hashtag combines the words "event" and "professionals". Using this hashtag, early in 2009, event industry professionals began communicating twice a week in popular Twitter chats. Each chat had a different focus and topic. It was truly a community effort with event industry professionals signing up on a roster to moderate the chats. Many familiar names passed by to participate in the chats including Julius Solaris of the popular Event Manager Blog (EventMB) and founder and owner of the thriving 360,000+ member Event Planning and Event Mangement Group of LinkedIn. (I have been the group manager there since 2008.) It's impossible to name everyone but Liz King, Jenise Fryatt, Michael McCurry, Samuel J. Smith, Jessica Levin, and Midori Connolly come immediately to mind.

The engagement continued off-line and, from time to time through informal gatherings and at major industry events like IMEX America and IMEX Frankfurt, #eventprofs began to meet each other face-to-face at #eventprofs Tweet-ups. 

Eventually, Adrian Segar of Conferences That Work took over the responsibility for organizing the chats. Adrian ultimately passed the baton to Brandt Krueger. After a while, Adrian began hosting weekly the Eventprofs Happy Hour, consisting of informal interaction with a small group of #eventprofs through live Skype Chats and, eventually Google hangouts. These have been announced @epchat on Twitter using the #eventprofs hashtag as well as #ephh. 

As documented by me in Is Social Media Becoming Less Social? on Brandt's blog,

Twitter hashtags like #eventprofs that once had active and vibrant chats twice a week.
On April 6, 2014, #eventprofs chats were quietly retired with the following announcement by Brandt Krueger:
The #EventProfs weekly chats are currently living on a beach, sipping boat drinks, in retirement. More info here." Anne Thornley-Brown

Adrian continued the informal weekly happy hours. Last year, they included interviews with experienced event planners like this one with Joan Eisenstodt on YouTube live.

Suffice it to say, the great networking both on-line and off-line that started with #eventprofs is sure to continue as new platforms emerge.

If you have been part of #eventprofs on any platform, please buzz on by and tell us about your experiences.