Innovation Gainesville

The iGainesville Campaign

Innovation Gainesville is a campaign that is being put on by the City of Gainesville. The campaign is using journalism 2.0 to extend its message around the state and country, with the goal of making Gainesville the Silicon Valley of the Southeast. The Chamber of Commerce along with the city commission and mayor have been very involved with the iGainesville campaign, and have done an outstanding job with the campaign's initial launch. It sounds ideal to turn any small town into Silicon Valley overnight, but I can't help but wonder if it's possible. So far, it seems that the buzz about Gainesville's renaissance hasn't been buzzed about by those living outside of Gainesville. In order for the campaign to be a success, it needs to reach those outside of the Gainesville bubble. For the town to become a bustling urban playground, a very large amount of people and companies are going to have to move to Gainesville. For that to happen, those people need to at least here about the economic progress that is being made here in Gainesville.

The start of a movement: iGainesville

After speaking with a Gator alum turned Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist, I got the feeling that the message hadn't quite reached the valley, or any real influncers outside of Gainesville. The city is using all of the right tools to get their message out, but aren't taking full advantage of the new media tools that can be used to spread messages. The Innovation Gainesville social accounts are rather lacking, and I found that I was able to capture an audience for my Twitter account on the first day with a minimum effort. I believe that I have proven that people are interested in the Innovation Gainesville movement by capturing so many followers in such a short period of time, and I hope that those running the iGainesville social accounts will follow my lead.

Social Media and iGainesville:

One of the first things that I noticed was the lack of social media savvy in the Innovation Gainesville movement. A solid critique of mine is the use of content curation in the campaign. Everyone involved in the movement is curating the same articles, which has caused for the feeds of everyone involved in the campaign to literally have the same posts over and over again. With some social savvy, I believe that there is a lot that can be said about the Innovation Gainesville movement that could have a long term impact. There are so many tech blogs and magazines that could write a great piece on Gainesville, but for some reason they aren't. Once there are some solid start-ups turned businesses created in this new economy, I believe that quality press coverage will come. Until then, social media is the best and most dependable bet for iGainesville press campaigns.