#UMFLINT24
On October 11, 2012, the University of Michigan-Flint set out to document 24 hours in the life of the university. The campus community was asked to take photos between 12:00 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. and share them via Twitter, Instagram, or Flickr with the #umflint24 tag.
The goal of this project began simply enough—to accurately portray life at UM-Flint through the voices of those living it. But would those people participate? Aside from the University Relations staff working for 24 hours straight to capture images (don’t feel too bad for us; we took shifts), who could we count on to take part? We did our best to reach out to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and others. Until the day unfolded, however, we had no idea what to expect.
We were so beyond pleasantly surprised. We were blown away.
Below is a summary of #UMFLINT24 on October 11.
- Photos submitted: 1,475
- Unique users: 253
- 871 unique visitors to #UMFLINT24 website, from 10 countries and 20 states
- #UMFLINT24 hashtag on Twitter: 764 tweets (average 31.83/hour), 67 retweets
- Unique reach of tweets and RTs: 78,156 users
- Most photos were first posted to Instagram
- Peak hours of activity: 12:00 – 12:59 p.m.; 7:00 – 7:59 a.m.; 6:00 – 6:59 p.m.
We did learn some lessons throughout the day on October 11. For example, how to overcome application feed limitations or better organize photos received by email. The biggest lesson, though, was that the UM-Flint community is listening, and—better yet—responding! We couldn’t be happier about the new connections we’ve made. As Jennifer Hogan shared in a message to campus, “It was a historical event, but even more importantly, a unifying event that brought together our community to share thoughts and images from a typical day at UM-Flint.”
See what #UMFLINT was all about at umflint.edu/umflint24.
