Conversations on the Ancient Agora

Chris Brauer

Filed under: Identity

Athens and the wonderful IMIC 2010 conference for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events (MICE) on 11 Feb, 2010 at the Megaron provided a stunning backdrop for Smoothmedia to present on innovative ways of nurturing and growing online identity with social media and innovation.

The Greek economy is under enormous pressure at the moment to resolve a spiralling debt crisis but the local travel and tourism industry continues to grow. In an increasingly competitive global tourism market, Greek providers are looking to further define and protect their online identities.

There was enormous interest in harnessing the powers of social media to wrestle control of public identity away from the aggregators and intermediaries in the travel industry.

We discussed the case study of the Ancient Agora in Athens, where citizens and visitors have been meeting for over 2500 years to discuss current affairs. Steeped in history, this location is in a perfect position to recreate identity online using social media.

Visitors could be encouraged to upload and share multimedia in the form of images, poems, narratives, videos or audio clips describing the therapeutic and reflective feeling of spending time in the Agora. These tagged fragments would eventually form a critical mass of content online describing the Agora and organically form a new identity for the crumbling tourist destination. This in turn can drive funding and sponsorship opportunities and open up micro-donations from a revived and engaged public interest.

Eventually the Agora could form partnerships with other beautiful historical sites for contemplation around the world to collaborate and cross-promote through social media. The Agora was and always will be about conversation.