I’ve been reflecting on Facebook’s Meta announcement over the past few weeks (If you haven’t seen it, here’s a link to an 11 minute recap.)
My jaw was on the floor, and at the same time, it struck me as surprisingly inevitable. I was left with plenty of questions.
From the:
How did they do it?
To the slightly more bothersome:
What will this mean for the distinction between VR and R(reality)?
What world will my children grow up in?
And gradually back to the practical:
How will I choose to participate?
What does this mean for organizations, like summer camp?
Like many of your organizations, Rockmont adopted facebook and instagram fairly early. We’ve utilized these and other tools as content delivery systems to keep our camp families engaged, and provide a slice of what summer camp is like to future camp families.
We’ve grown in our ability to produce, schedule, and deliver content that clearly accomplishes goals: engagement, drive website traffic, generate comments/shares, etc.
As the tools have expanded, we’ve stretched to meet them: implementing videos, reels, stories, etc. We even (technically) have a TikTok account.
And we may be approaching a fork in the road. The social media tools we’ve grown into are not static. They are changing. And this may be a great opportunity to take stock in our usage of them.
As an industry, we’ve held space for campers to have fun, participate in adventures, flourish, grow, and learn – away from social media and the pressure of being tethered to a device. As we’ve spoken with our parents, social media (and its absence within the camper experience) has become a major factor as they make the decision to send their son to camp.
Has your organization begun the conversation around how you will utilize social media as it evolves year over year?
I was a bit misleading in the subject line; I’m not asking for a friend.
I have a few ideas, a ton of questions, and an unrequested renewal of hope for the experiences we offer to campers and staff. I’m grateful for industry partners that are doing the good work as well!
Daniel Weatherby
