By Shannon Finn, OVC 2018
Originally published on Shannon Finn: Student Veterinarian Blog
This was one busy weekend! It was packed with activities right up until the end of the night Saturday. It was great to meet students from around the country and learn about the differences and similarities in our programs. It was also great to show them around the campus, showcase our school and our faculty, as well as talk about things that might not have been so easy to bring up. We got a chance to show them some Guelph hospitality and made some new friends as well!
Instead of simply recapping the event in words, I’d like to do it using my favourite tool; social media. Having a great social media presence was one of the goals of this Symposium, in order to get students involved and hopefully inspire them to bring it back to their own school! My classmates, Tori and Julia did an AMAZING job at running the social media all weekend and in the week leading up to it on Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. With the help of our Marketing Communications Officer at OVC, Jane, they were able to get some really cool stuff going! Some students used the opportunity to share their own stuff, and some were just excited to follow along. I had 3 students staying at my house from FMV in Quebec, and although they didn’t have Twitter, they said they followed OVC’s Snapchat just for Symposium. They were also featured on it during the surgery wet labs and were so excited!
I love seeing vet students use this stuff in order to educate and bring awareness to the cool things we learn. So I’ve compiled some of my favourite social media moments from the SCVMA weekend in order to give you an inside look if you weren’t following along all weekend!
1. Prepping for Symposium! I loved this post by WCVM student, Alex Boo. It’s got the creative Instagram flair that makes it so eye catching! (His whole account is actually pretty awesome!)
2. Arrived and Ready. I was so excited to see the other schools getting involved with the Snapchat. We had been running around all week to get ready and it hadn’t felt like students were really coming to OVC. So I had to grab this picture from the AVC students when they arrived in Guelph, they looked just as pumped as we were on Thursday night, and seeing students arriving made it feel like Symposium had finally come!
3. Lectures begin. Time for the educational stuff! One of the best things about Instagram is the ability to write a really good caption for pictures to provide information. No character limit! Meg from OVC provided some great background information for a lecture that she helped organize!
4. Lecture Live Tweets. Live tweeting at conferences is a common use for Twitter among veterinarians. It helps provide snippets of information in real time for those that can’t attend. I knew my roommate Melanie was going to attend the Cull-cow Management Talk that I couldn’t, so I challenged her to do some live-tweeting. And she delivered! (She was actually rocking the social media all weekend, and has an awesome Twitter account)
5. Sponsors getting involved! OVC Pet Trust sponsored a wonderful talk on “How do you know when to say goodbye” and I heard nothing but rave reviews about it from students all day! It was nice to get a picture for Twitter of the attendees that got to enjoy the talk!
6. Wet labs. The Friday afternoon proved for lots of hands-on learning! The SCVMA Instagram and Snapchat accounts were on fire trying to capture it all! Notice that people were viewing and tagging their friends when they saw them!
7. Vine to capture it all! Vine is great for quick compilations, and Jane made a great one on the OVC account featuring some video from the Snapchat story! (You can watch the video here)
8. More great wet lab stuff. Sarah Zelinski, a WCVM student shared this awesome tweet today from the Canine Ultrasound lab!
9. The CVMA joins in! Bringing awareness to the workshops that we produced in order to help with mental health – our big Elephant in the Room. It’s great when bigger organizations share our stuff, it reaches a greater audience and helps to spread the message!
10. Impressive demos. I heard so many good things about the Dogs with Jobs demo… luckily my classmate Caitlin shared a video of some highlights!
11. Tours! Saturday afternoon brought the chance to go on tours of some local attractions. The Donkey Sanctuary of Canada is just outside Guelph, and there were so many good pictures of the adorable donkeys. I loved this video by fellow Owl, Faith (who also has a great vet school blog!)
12. Elora Dairy Tour. My friend Mel (killing it again) showcasing the use of Instagram’s extended captions to give extra facts! It also doesn’t hurt to share irresistible calves!
13. The Zoo! Some students got to go to the Toronto Zoo for a full day, and with the beautiful pictures, I didn’t even feel like I missed it! Especially this great pic by Louise from OVC!
14. Mingling with new friends at the closing banquet. Captured on Snapchat!
15. Banquet time and a wrap up. Jamie shared this pic of our class looking spiffy and happy that we managed to pull it off. Her caption really sums it all up!
16. One last Snapchat…
