Anyone paying attention to twitter lately has no doubt seen what I think is an interesting meme in online communities… #fake(whatever). The first time I saw this was with a colleague of mine, @NikkiMK when she did a #fakeheweb hashtag last year leading up to the HighEdWeb conference. Recently I’ve seen #fakesxsw and as of yesterday, #fakeacpa10. These are just a few of what I’ve seen, but I’m sure there are many more. The “fake” meme also includes another twist, #fauxsquare, which for those of you that don’t know or don’t use it, is related to a location-based social network called foursquare that allows you to check-in at different locations and broadcast that.

When @NikkiMK started the #fakeheweb hashtag last year I thought it was brilliant. There are so many amazing conferences that happen for higher education that it’s basically impossible for anyone to attend all of them,  so for those that couldn’t make it, the #fakeheweb tag allowed a whole new community to develop around people that could *NOT* attend the conference for one reason or another. It was fun, creative, and brought together a group of people that might not have ever spoken and were likely feeling somewhat left out because they couldn’t attend the conference. Instead of moping around about not being able to attend, #fakeheweb brought people together. It built a new community.

This Sunday, I’m heading to Boston for ACPA 2010. I’ve never attended the ACPA conference, but I was lucky enough to be accepted to present there with some amazing women from Texas Women’s University and I’m looking forward to meeting all of them and being part of ACPA. The other evening I mentioned on twitter that I was feeling a little overwhelmed with the magnitude of ACPA (having never been there before) and asked if anyone had advice. My question was retweeted by @reyjunco with the hashtag of #sachat. I’ve seen some #sachat sessions taking place on twitter but have never really participated in those sessions because for some reason (and I honestly couldn’t tell you what that reason was because I have no idea) I didn’t feel like I should be part of that community. After receiving many responses from people in the #sachat community I realized immediately what a fantastic group of people they are, and what a great resource that group is. I’m happy to say that I have now decided that I have every right to be part of that group and look forward to participating. Back to our story…

Last night, several members of the #sachat community started a movement to create a #fakeacpa10 hashtag for those people that couldn’t attend ACPA 2010 next week. Some of the posts I’ve seen so far with this hashtag are incredibly funny and creative. What we’re seeing, once again, is the development of a new community within an already established group based on an event they will *not* be attending.  I will be attending in-person, but I love that through the use of both the #acpa10 and the #fakeacpa10 hashtags, we can *all* participate and have fun doing so. It’s almost as though we’re making a new game out of conference attendance. The “#fake” tag becomes the unconference of conferences and as we all know, the unconference part is usually the most fun.

I, for one, am already thinking about ways to incorporate both tags into my tweets from the event because I think that by using both we’re connecting both groups and making this fun for everyone. I think sometimes we get so caught up in self-promotion, crafting our image, and talking about frou-frou stuff that we forget to have fun. This is fun and I’m looking forward to being part of it.