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 Sarah Chesemore Created for the Research Showcase Washington State University – Vancouver DTC 375 – Language, Texts, & Technology Spring 2009 Welcome to the World of Tweetem where everyone is a poet!
How it works is the user would post via the interactive medium, in this case: Twitter. (*Twitter is a social network where the user, in 140 characters or less, answers the question “What are you doing?”). Through Twitter, the user uses the “@reply” to post the next line to the poem. The RSS feed “grabs” this line and automatically updates the Tweetem website in real-time. The user is then able to view their added line to the poem and see how it has contributed and affected the poem. In the end the contribution lagged quite a bit. I was placed in charge of the marketing and liaison work and after excessive amounts of contact with different people, our only real strategy laid within the contribution of the students of WSU-V and the group’s friends. First, we mass informed our friends via social networks whether it was Twitter or Facebook, requesting everyone to contribute to the poem. Second, after reaching the woman in charge of the showcase, Nichole Davis, we were able to display the website in the Firstenburg Student Commons for a limited amount of time. Unfortunately due to the lack of space and time, the marketing strategies faltered and we were left with sixteen lines to the poem. My experience at the research showcase was actually sort of up and down. I arrived there at 9am and stayed until 4pm, but even though the time seemed to be quite lengthy, I don’t feel much time was spent for the project in itself. I entered the day thinking the FSC would be swarmed with people and that my group wouldn’t get a chance to take a break until the lull came at noon. Though there was a steady amount of people, the number of onlookers was quite minimal to what I expected. On top of that, many of the students there seemed to be there for a class requirement. After having participated in the showcase, I would definitely hope that the outcome would possibly be greater next year. Now that I’ve seen it firsthand, I would like to attend it next year (not as a participant, thank you). 
When people first started to arrive, I was a little let down by how many people couldn’t wouldn’t contribute to the Tweetem poem, because of (a) they didn’t have time or (b) they would be back to do it later. The hardest part was trying to get people to take the time to get involved with the project and after about four rejections in the first part of the morning; I was dreading what would happen next. However, along with the judges, more and more people became interested in what this strange poem on the projector was all about. The first time I actually had to speak to a person was a judge. I felt somewhat ready to answer any questions he had. We chatted for about five minutes when out of the blue he asked me something about a hatch or hitch or something. I may have stared at him for a brief moment when I saw Kerry out of the corner of my eye and immediately called him over for help. The issue I wasn’t expecting to encounter was questions beyond my level of knowledge. I know the basics of the project and how it worked and ran, but when it came to the actual creation of the poem, I knew very little about it. Someone tried to explain it to me, but it goes right over my head. I wish I had been a little more prepared, but I feel that’s the benefit of always having two people at the project to answer questions. I don’t really enjoy talking to strangers very often, so the showcase was kind of uncomfortable for me. But it was nice to have my peers around and interesting to see how everyone was doing around me. Though the showcase is probably something I would not want to participate in again, I do feel I gained a good amount of experience by just being there. Though I definitely placed myself in an unfamiliar situation and was pretty out of my element, it still benefited to me because I was able to survive it.
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What is Tweetem?
How Does it Work?