I’ve been watching Twitter for Volcano related tweets lately in order to stay on top of the situation and was curious when a few #TEDxvolcano tags appeared in my feed.

According to the TEDblog, some of their members who were stranded in London due to the Volcano decided to make the best of it and put together an impromptu event that is being live streamed to the rest of the world:

Stranded by the ash cloud, inspired by the just-concluded Skoll World Forum, and temporarily headquartered in one of the world’s greatest cities, a group of entrepreneurs, thinkers, tinkerers and creatives is throwing an unprecendented TEDx event: TEDxVolcano.

Put together in 48 hours by TEDster Nathaniel Whittemore with the support of TED, TEDxLondon, The Hub, Sandbox Network, Assetmap and many others, TEDxVolcano will feature a wide range of thinkers and doers stranded by the volcano, plus inspired audience participation and a few ash-induced surprises. Also: the extraordinary sounds of London-based, global-minded musician Susheela Raman.

The list of speakers includes:

• Cara Mertes, director of the Sundance Documentary Film Program
• 2006 TED Prize winner Larry Brilliant, president of Skoll Global Threats Fund
• CBS travel correspondent Peter Greenberg
• First Round Capital‘s Chris Fralic
• Skoll Foundation executive director Sally Osberg
• Jim Fruchterman, CEO of Benetech and MacArthur “genius” fellow
• Rita King, CEO of Dancing Ink Productions
• Matthew Bishop & Michael Green, author of Philantrocapitalism and The Road from Ruin
• and Jim Berk, CEO of Participant Media

It’s set to start at 6pm UK time, and we’ll be RT’ing it live from @TEDNews — hashtag #tedxvolcano — and posting photos from Robert Leslie and others as soon as they come in.

Watch the live stream HERE.

I love that when faced with an unforeseen obstacle, people will still find ways to come together and exchange ideas and knowledge. I also love the spontaneity of the whole thing and how in 48 hours people came together to launch what is sounding like a pretty awesome event.

I recently saw this video of a Facebook campaign created around the launch of a new store Ikea in Malmo, Sweden in late 2009.  What Ikea did was very simple, easy, and smart. They created a Facebook photo album with 12 showroom pictures. Whoever tagged the product first got to keep it. The campaign quickly went viral as the online enthusiasm spread to users’ facebook profiles and newsfeeds.

Watch them explain the campaign in their own words:

Why I love this campaign:

1) Use what you have:

There was no need to develop a fancy application or create a complicated web presence. They used two existing features that most users were already familiar with: tagging pictures and the sharing functionality.

2) Clear strategic objectives:

They knew what they wanted to accomplish: get people talking about the launch of the store and spread the news to their online network. The entry barrier to participate was very low. Anyone could easily and quickly be a part of the campaign.

3) A realistic campaign life cycle:

They set a clear deadline (12 days) and the end point for the campaign was clearly communicated to all  members. As more organizations execute social media strategies our attention spans will continue to shrink. I think many organizations have a misguided notion that they have to build a long lasting community of people who will remain engaged with the brand for months.

I can see where this perspective comes from considering building an online community of active members takes a lot of time and effort and companies want to see some bang for their buck. However, Ikea proves you can have an effective campaign with a shorter life cycle that is just as effective at getting the job done. I do want to point out that I am referring to specifically branded campaigns and not Ikea’s overall web presence.

4) They incented the right actions:

It really makes me laugh. People love getting things for free. Whatever it is, if it’s free someone will happily take it. AND they’ll tell their friends about it. Ikea was able to move the online discussion beyond the boundaries of one photo album and into the digital common space by counting on the fact that people will gloat about their free loot. And it worked like a charm.Whether it was announcing that they won something, or encouraging their friends to take part it made sense for people to talk about the campaign.

Well done Ikea!!

Many thanks to my friend Kimmo Kuortti, Director of International Relations at the University of Oulu in Finland for sharing this wonderful video with me!