Social Media at Sundance

On Friday as I attended a few talks of the University Venture Summit, during which I met quite a few people that use Twitter.  Amazingly, I think Twitter is really starting to become the communications medium for Entrepreneurs.  I t may be catching on a little more in the Geek and development community lately, but with as strong of a networking potential as it provides, I believe the Entrepreneurs have grasped it much faster than the rest of the world.

As I followed a few of these new visitors to Utah, I started to notice some of them were using a new term, prefacing “sundance” with #, seeming to direct their Tweets to those at Sundance.  In IRC world (I often term Twitter as IRC 2.0), #sundance would mean the sundance channel.  So I decided to track the term “sundance” on Twitter as the Sundance festival went on in Utah last weekend and throughout this week.  Wow what a new view of Sundance I received!

I soon learned of a Tweetup some of those at Sundance were having.  I decided it might be worth driving up to Park City to meet some of the non-Utah Twitters visiting town, so I drove up with Charlie Oliver (@charlieoliver on Twitter) to see what all the hype was.  It was there that I met with Sperling Reich (@sperling on Twitter), Justin Keller (@justinkeller on Twitter), and Colleen Coplick (@colleencoplick on Twitter).  Justin works for Cha Cha, a social search service very similar to Mahalo.  They were handling a service as a sponsor of the Sundance Film Festival which helped visitors, tourists, and Stars figure out what’s going on, where to find things in town, and more.  I heard someone Twitter this week that Quintin Terantino is in love with their service after this week!  Colleen is a Social Media Consultant and PR expert, and she was doing photography and PR for the festival.  Sperling is working on a new site (sorry Sperling – don’t remember all the details!) of some sort which tracks screenplays behind films, along with other film-type technology.

Over the weekend and during this week, through Twitter, I’ve learned that there was a Facebook Party, a MySpace party, a MySpace cafe (I heard over Twitter they give good swag!), and a few others like that.  I heard where Seal was.  I heard where several other stars were hanging out.  I heard how people up in Sundance were taking the death of Heath Ledger.

I’ve never seen so much from a birds eye view of the festival!  It’s amazing the role that Social Media is taking in these festivals and conferences.  I must try to track the places I’m in or near from here on out on Twitter.  I will definitely be going to the Festival and be more involved in it next year after this – the Sundance Film festival is now truly a “Social” event!  Now, I want to know why Twitter (the company) didn’t have a presence there!  Their users certainly were.