Sharing Stories:

Last year, I was lucky and was able to tell my story in a BIG way.  Sharing my content and images through a blog and making over 30 media appearances in major publications around the globe.  It was fun, it was exciting, it was selfish.

One of the things that bothered me through out the trip last year was the fact that our “party to-go” marathon around the US received a ton of media coverage and that altruistic projects like Greg Krause’s 30dayonjetblue.com ended up as a foot note in the concluding paragraphs.  It was an interesting problem, how could I solve it?

By Creating a community!

I spoke at the JetBlue Executive Leadership Conference at West Point last year and told them; next year build the scaffold, the community will develop around it organically.

I believe they did a good job using the tools that they were able to use (as a corporation with a legal department and communications guidelines, I’m sure they were somewhat limited by the liability openness exposes the brand to [remember the skittles fiasco]).  I believe that Morgan Johnston and the JetBlue Communications team have done incredible things with their twitter community, facebook pages, blog, and flickr pool.  They really use those channels to their fullest and have created the playbook that other businesses try and replicate.  But, a community of loosely coupled travellers, criss-crossing the western hemisphere, in real time; need more connectivity, more openness, and they need it aggregated in one place.

What AllYouCanJetwork.com NetSetJet.com brings to the table:

So this year, lets build a thriving and interactive community of jet-setters based around a portal.

Enter All You Can Jetwork NetSetJet.com — a community site for everyone to enjoy this culture phenomenon.

Implemented Features:

• Live Twitter feed of #AYCJ
• Community Forum
• Flickr Integration – Grabs photos tagged AYCJ
• AYCJ Community Blog Aggregator (Contact me to have your blog added to our feeds)

Features coming soon

• User Profiles
  • Website URL
  • Foursquare URL (Used to populate our map)
  • Facebook URL
  • Twitter Handle
  • CouchSurfer URL
• Foursquare/Google Maps Mash-up – Showing our users locations around the US! (Find out which other AYCJ’ers are in the same city as you)
• Community Wiki – Share tips on travelling and list cool places to visit in all the AYCJ cities!
• Live Twitter Feed of @jetblue/aycj
• OAuth Integration: Log-in using twitter or facebook to authenticate.

What can you do?

Share stories, images, video, and make new friends.  The spirit of AYCJ is laced with adventure, so take the plunge! Visit http://www.allyoucanjetwork.com and register.  The team and I hope to have the rest of our feature set developed in this next week.  We want to keep refining the experience and adding fun ideas to the project throughout the month of September.

Leave a comment and give us your ideas!

http://www.twelvehoursinacity.com

Official Press Release:

17 aug 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact:
Clark Dever
12hoursinacity.com
716-713-3199
clarkdever@gmail.com

12hoursinacity.com
Marathon Jet Travel, Two friends fly for 31 Days straight with only 12 hours in a city between flights.

BUFFALO, NEW YORK, AUGUST 16 2009 — Clark Dever and Joe DiNardo have decided to take full advantage of JetBlue’s “All You Can Jet” promotion, allowing unlimited flights from September 8th through October 8th. They plan on flying continuously, from city to city, keeping their time on the ground as close to 12 hours as possible.

The difference with their trip and that of everyday travelers and road-trippers? The pair plans to document their entire journey using a blog and social media. Dever, also a professional photographer, will be capturing and publishing photos of the trip as it progresses. They also plan to conduct interviews with passengers and citizens, creating a broad glimpse of America as they travel. These interviews and montages of the country will be uploaded to the blog on a daily basis, giving fans the opportunity to follow Joe & Clark’s adventures as they happen. While on the ground Joe & Clark will visit as many local attractions as possible to capture the culture of the individual cities; from local architecture and landmarks, to music, and nightlife.

Social media will play a big role in this journey the two plan on using the popular websites Twitter (twitter.com) and Facebook (facebook.com) to interact with their followers throughout the trip.

“I was talking with Joe about a trip I was planning at the time and he said ‘Did you hear about the JetBlue Promotion?’after he quickly explained it; we decided that we had to rise to the challenge, to see and document as much of the US as possible, in a single month.” said Dever

“Clark and I have always had the kind of friendship where we peer-pressure each other to do outlandish things, we’ve always competed to have the best stories at the end of the night. I see this as just a natural progression from our usual antics. I really don’t know what will happen, but we both agree that whatever it is, it will be entertaining – definitely worth watching.” mused DiNardo

“I think the greatest part about this adventure is that everyone can be a part of it. We have a wiki, where viewers in each city can tell us where to go and eat, what’s the must-see attraction, what events are happening while we’re in town, etc. Never has a trip of this magnitude been planned with the help of so many people, we look forward to interacting with our viewers through the blog and twitter. I think it will spur very interesting conversation.” related Dever

Flight itineraries are being planned now and updates can be found at the official website for the project (12hoursinacity.com). Sponsorship opportunities are available.

Joe and Clark are two regular guys with an appetite for adventure, who quest for the unusual and the unexpected.

Please contact Joe DiNardo (joedinardo@gmail.com, 716-870-5633) with any questions.

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