The Blogpatch

Just back from the MTV 2009 Video Music Awards, where we integrated Twitter into the pre and post show with the help of Stamen and Radian6, with iJustine reporting. Catch some clips of the pre show here and here.

The VMAs are a major production–it seemed like all of the city, from the police and fire departments, to every production engineer, teenager, musician, dancer, celebrity and roadie had flooded to Radio City Music Hall.

Our team was in one of the tents surrounding Radio City Music Hall, and between the screaming fans, massive ganglia of wires running everywhere, trucks, satellites, cameras, monitors, sound boards, the shaking from the bass of the music, smoke, rain, wind and fire, it felt a little like being at war–but a fun, if stressful, war.

Go here to see the online, interactive version of the VMA Twitter visualization.

I only managed to take a few photos of odds and ends, since we were just a bit busy, but Stamen put together a nice blog post from behind the scenes:

Twitter on comms. We had our own channel.

Backstage during rehearsals on Saturday.

My position in the tent. You can see Kanye blowing up post his outburst.

VMAs during act one, from the back.

Radian6, Stamen in the Twitter tent.