Tribe Social Deck’s Social Fan Experience

My Peeps at the Tribe Social Deck

It all started with an idea. I had wanted to have a cool event for my birthday. A friend and I were considering venues. We wanted the event to be somewhat of a Tweet Up where we could meet up with our social media friends. We considered one location on the west side, but people complained about driving that far out and the venue we were considering was not being  cooperative. They seemed confused about the idea of a tweet up.

So while we were discussing some other venue options.  I attended a Nordonia Hills Chamber of Commerce luncheon and sat next to Dave Murray, Director of fan services for the Cleveland Indians! After explaining to him that I am a social media specialist, he proceeded to tell me about the brand spanking new Tribe Social deck!

Say Hi! to Rob Campbell

I thought that sounded like the perfect place to Tweet up! We actually had the privilege to go before my birthdays and check it out. Rob Campbell from the Indians, helped me with all the details.

The tribe social deck is a new section at Progressive field. It includes 10 new seats that are Wi-Fi friendly. The seats are in a special section next to the bleachers. There is a TV so there is no need do to crane your neck to see the scoreboard behind the bleacher and plugs for laptop or other devices that need a recharge. In fact we could have jumped up and did jumping jacks and no one would have been bothered.

Tv view of the game as well as an awesome live view of the game!

So I wrangled some of my Twitter/Facebook friends, and off we went! It was nice having a special place to Twitter about the experience. Even though the Indians lost, we still had a great time. Some of us had our laptops and some had smart phones. We discussed hosting,  iPads, WordPress, Twitter applications like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. There was a special “check-in” at Foursquare for the Tribe Social Deck. There was no one to tell us to loose the “geek speak”!

Awesome view from the Tribe Social Deck

The Indian’s are the first team (that we know of) that has implemented this social fan experience. There is a very interesting article here about the Tribe’s social media policy. The Tribe Social Deck was recently featured in this week’s ESPN Magazine! You can follow the discussions and the coming and goings of  Tribe Social Deck’s inhabitants on the Twitter hashtag #tribesocialdeck.  Rob Campbell can be found on Twitter @tribetalk

The Indian’s are working on a system where people can register for tickets for the special hi-tech section, but I am very honored to be a part of it’s beginning. What a way to have a birthday! It was a big hit (pun intended).