Announcing Winners of #FMCSummerSM

Attending the Fair Media Council’s Summer Social Media Boot Camp requires lots more than a willingness to sit in a chair for half a day. 

Oh no, attendees display cunning skill, extreme patience, and panther-like stalking capabilities to ensure they snare a most-coveted prize: A free ticket to Oct. 21’s FMC Connection Day, the largest conference in the country to bring news media and community together for a day of open dialogue, relationship building, mutual understanding and story pitching.

The Flip Flop Throwdown, on the surface, gave everyone the chance to participate and win, simply by tricking out their flips! This year we saw sparkly flips, shiny flips, Olympic-themed flips and furry flips. What made this contest more interesting, if you will, was the opportunity for participants to meet the judges and yes, put their best foot forward.

Emerging victorious in the 2016 Flip Flop Throwdown was Farmingdale State College’s Kathy Coley, for her furry blue flippers. The fur and coloring made it appear she had ‘liberated’ her shoes from Oscar the Grouch for the day — by hey, let’s not spread rumors!

But wait, there’s more: For the first time, we had a Throwdown tie! Bethpage Federal Credit Union’s SJ Yun rose to the challenge with Olympic-themed flips that helped him secure his first-time victory and very impressive showing, according to various judges.

While the Throwdown was happening, attendees were also hard at work … tweeting. As always, the most interesting tweet of the day wins a prize and this year, the winner was clear cut for his clever, nonstop Twitter conversation that reflected some of the highlights of the morning: Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff’s ability to mention ‘quantum physics’ and the Kardashians in the same sentence. A dare for PokemonGo players in the Oceanside area to enter the South Nassau Communities Hospital Conference Center during boot camp and, well, the list goes on and on.

So what did Stony Brook University’s Chris D’Orso — who also gave a great talk on finding your voice in social media — ultimately tweet that secured his win? Googling how to make flip flops out of bacon.

Yeah, gotta admit we hadn’t seen that before.

Winners will be at our daylong conference on Oct. 21. In the meantime, mark your calendar for July 14, 2017 in anticipation of the 7th Annual Summer Social Media Boot Camp.