The night of the Homelessness Marathon I must have been so enthralled in the stories and struggles of the homeless that it just physically impacted me - and resulted in tonsillitis, lol. Convenient, right? Well hope you all didn't miss me too much. I'm so done with my immune system, I think it's time we break up actually.
Anyways, the Homelessness Marathon was quite the experience. I've grown up into a world that has been taken over by social media. I remember myspace, at least for my age group, was the first sensational form of youth and adult networking and communication via the web. Now there's got to be thousands of sites that operate similarly to keep the world in touch. When we dove into this project I was pretty confident about my communicative skills.
I created a twitter account and mass followed any group or person that had been tagged or interested in matter such as homelessness, poverty, social justice, etc. Most of these organizations have a tool that allows them to immediately follow back, which resulted in almost 200 people following my new account over night. I was really amazed at the feedback and support I gained solely from groups on twitter. I would tweet about our embed player, and have an inbox full of DM's about the embed code in minutes. Can I just say, having a droid at this time was the most beautiful yet frustrating thing to have? My phone was literally, "blowing up" with contacts. It was the first time I had really utilized a social network for well, exactly what it was designed for. These people who had never even met or seen or even knew I was a real person at all, trusted me enough to share media for a one night event and loan a place on their sites for our embed player. What a good feeling! We even had viewers from Ireland, IRELAND! Isn't that awesome? I was talking to a few of them and it was 6am where they were and we were only a few hours into the marathon. I believe those viewers also stayed tuned for all 14 hours!
Well, overall, I enjoyed watching the marathon for the several hours I managed to stay awake. The live streaming was a lot easier than I expected, and I probably annoyed the shit out of all my friends on facebook, but if they knew what was good for them....just kidding! I gained a few "likes" on the clips I posted. I am so glad I was a part of this, and I can't wait to grind out another night of clip posting, tweeting, streaming, topic discussing, instant messaging and other utter awesomeness for the Boston media event!
In other irrelevant news that I love to include in my intern posts, I'm doing some filming tonight for my friend Josh, the owner of Plants & Animals Denver. His organization hosts a delicious vegan dinner, "Chomp!", the first Wednesday of every month, and you can even win door prizes or take home free recipes! I usually try to include this in the action calendar, but I done goofed this week! Tonight it's at Green Spaces at 7:00pm. Check it out if you're interested!
-Kimberly
Wow Kim! Great observations on the Tweets. I think it is amazing at how far we have come with social interactions. You did an amazing job outsourcing for the event and you obviously saw the results. This is the sole reason the Development Department pushes for social media outreach. Hope you are feeling better!
ReplyDelete-Lauren
Kim - I'm glad to hear you had such positive feedback from your contacts. Also, that was really cool how you branched out on twitter. Thanks again for helping me get set up to post clips!
ReplyDelete-Andrew
Thanks Lauren! I agree, it's strange that some people feel they need to give up their facebook, twitter, or myspace account for religious practices as if it's a threatening addiction, if only they could realize it's actually a beautiful tool if used the right way!
ReplyDeleteAnd of course Andrew, I feel like I was learning all this stuff from Dan and Adam just yesterday....oh interns how they just grow up so fast. :'(