On September 7, 2007, over 300 groups across the nation staged protest picnics as part of Slow Food’s Time for Lunch campaign to make changes in the National School Lunch program. As Social Media chair for the Atlanta eat-in at Piedmont Park, I helped to coordinate over 70 very cool volunteers from the rogueApron network. Together, we brainstormed a plan, recruiting over 300 folks to join us in support of good food in schools.

Working with Slow Food Atlanta, Georgia Organics, Whole Foods and other organizations, we printed flyers that went all over town. Avatars were designed to promote the event on Facebook and Twitter. I set up a text-to-Flickr address, allowing eventgoers to send photos of the event to Flickr in real-time. I also helped the organization build some of their social media entities, including their current Twitter accounts.

Slow Food President Josh Viertel joined our picnic – out of every picnic nationwide! – and we were thrilled with the photo slideshow on the homepage of the AJC that day. And just a little over a year later, President Obama signed into law some important legislature that made changes to the way we feed kids in schools.