Shawn and I are camped out in a trailer outside BET studios in Washington, DC to support BET, CMT and MTV’s “A Conversation with Barack Obama,” which airs at 4pm Eastern Time today. It’s the usual madcap Keystone Cops situation that seems to be an inevitable part of live television production with wires and cables dangling every which way, and I sure hope the rain dies down by the time the event starts, if only so that we can hear each other over the incessant pounding on the roof of the trailer.
The visualization is online here, and builds on work that was previously battle-tested at the 2010 Video Music Awards. The idea is that you post messages to twitter with the #ask hashtag, followed by the issue you’re interested in asking the President about. If it’s a good one, he may answer it on the air. There’s a list of the tags we’re actively monitoring at this point on MTV’s site, and we’re actively monitoring the hashtags and plan to change and adjust the piece right up until show time. It is a live visualization, after all. This is our fifth live event collaboration with the good people at Twitter and MTV, and Eddy, the product we designed to support this kind of live twitter/television interaction, continues to evolve as we learn more and more about how the internet and live events can support one another.
There are lots of strong-looking men in suits walking around now with serious expressions and earplugs tucked into their collars, so it seems like this show is about to hit the road. More after the event. If you’ve got something you’d like to ask the President, twitter’s here for you.
