On Friday night, I attended “Arts Madness” on campus. As part of the class this blog is for, each student has to complete a “live tweet” coverage of an event. I was planning on live tweeting the film festival I was helping to organize with some friends, but that ended up not happening. (Long story, we’re mostly not bitter….) I almost chose to live tweet the Oscars, since I had already planned on watching it while home on spring break. I tweeted, but not to the extent required for the assignment (it was mostly all snarky… I mean, that’s me in a nutshell.)
Always wanting to have fun, Austin. That’s you in a nutshell! Austin Powers: No, this is me in a nutshell. Help! I’m in a nutshell! How did I get into this nutshell? Look at the size of this bloody great big nutshell!
Sorry, had to. Such a great line…
Anyways, I was struggling to find something that I could actually attend that worked with my class and work schedule since these last weeks of the semester are crazy. I can’t live tweet ELLIV (an end of year concert at Cedarville) since I’m stage managing it, and that just ain’t gonna work. Then, Arts Madness happened!
There were two different places in the student center that held concerts, and I chose the option in the Hive (okay, it was the free option, college student here). There were two ensembles, the Vocal Arts Ensemble and the NAfME ensemble, as well as a harp ensemble to close out the event.
I consider myself a fairly frequent tweeter, but it all depends on the day and what’s happening. I don’t think I’ve ever tweeted that much in an hour and a half.
I lost a follower.
Note: I’m assuming it’s one of those random people that I don’t even know that started following me for no reason? Or maybe my Lit teacher from high school who I also don’t know why she started following me? Either way, its nothing to lose sleep over.
It was actually kind of fun, but I did feel slightly bad for those following me…
Back to the real issue at hand – the concert!
Even though I’m not a huge fan of the styles of music they played, there’s no doubt these students are talented. There was a good mixture of songs, and some were acapella while others were accompanied by a pianist.
It was a pretty small room and while the room was full, I still felt awkward looking at my phone every few minutes to tweet again.
Switching gears slightly, there was no designated hashtag that I saw for the event, so I began using #CUpopsconcert and #artsmadness. I forgot a few times and didn’t add it and there were times I didn’t have enough characters, but most of my tweets had one or the other (or both) of those hashtags.
I think live tweets are an interesting way to see an event. On one hand it’s great to have the feeling of being there without actually being there, but on the other hand, it’s through an individual’s perspective, so there could be missing pieces of information or skewed information (intentionally or unintentionally).
I don’t see myself doing a live tweet of this magnitude (ie, regular updates about the happenings of an event, rather than occasional remarks on the matter) all the time unless it’s for a job, but it was definitely a fun and interesting learning experience.
While there were a few tweets the got favorited, I was most amused by a friend favoriting my last one. 🙂
A Pen Still Works 