Hack the Debate. It feels good to launch.
Sunday, October 5th, 2008A fabulous few weeks, all centered around the launch of Hack the Debate with the first Presidential Debate on September 26th. This was an idea about three months in the making, but 18 months in gestation. At last, at last…
Some photos to illustrate the event. My Dad visited and caught the very first one which was quite special.
First, how others saw Hack the Debate. Current sponsored the DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival, which included a screening of Hack the Debate at Galapagos:
Folks also took photos from home, trying to catch their tweets, and posted them to Flickr: Matt Cohen and Urbanblitz.
A screen shot from our Kennedy/Nixon debate promo video:
We started the first presidential debate with a blogger outreach event, and Al addressed everyone assembled. This was 45 minutes before we went live and I had no idea if it was going to 1) technically work, and 2) be interesting. Slightly stressful. Here’s the video–including a shout out to Dad–in an appropriately snarky post on ValleyWag.
The bloggers and journalists observing.
Robin, my co-conspirator in this effort, and me just before launch.
Dad, Al, Joel and Joshua at the end of the introductions.
The Twitter River editors, at work, with Andrew in command:
The Production Control Room, getting ready:
This is about 20 minutes before going live, in Production Control Room, watching the dias at Oxford University in Mississippi via our ABC NewsOne live satellite feed, and my Twitter page:
Hack the Debate II: Palin/Biden. October 2nd, 2008.
Here we are in the middle of the VP debate, in Production Control:
Trying to read the tweets, listen to the debate, watch upcoming tweets, and absorb various other inputs:
Looking more relaxed during an as-live test earlier in the day:
Conor prepping for his live bridge, while we tweet over him. Notice the unicorn avatar? This is the default avatar we inserted when we couldn’t include users’ own avatars due to copyright issues, or if they didn’t have one. My, do I love that we squeezed a green unicorn into the debates.
So many social media things going on in this photo:
A final photo of Dad, pensive, overlooking the Current TV offices:
See everything, including cut-downs of the debates and all the fabulous TV promos, here:
