I’ve been known to do geeky things. For one, I’ve been experimenting with putting parts of my life on the web live via Twitter. For another, I’ve been going to a 30-hour science fiction movie marathon with friends for the past 14 years.
It’s time to merge the two together in a Twitter Experiment this weekend. Starting on Friday, 7 p.m. EST I’ll be posting updates to Twitter about the movies, ridiculous sci-fi plot devices, funny cracks from the crowd, and the general movie marathon experience.
Now for some questions and answers:
Q: How can I follow along?
A: Follow me on Twitter and watch the snippets roll in. Alternatively, if you’re connected to me on Facebook you can watch my status updates, it’s the same thing.
Q: I’m going to be there, how can I participate?
Let me know in the comments below, we’ll make it a thing.
EDIT: Use hashtag #marathon34 in any Tweets.
Q: Why would anyone have even the slightest interest in this?
A: The CWRU Science Fiction Marathon is really an excuse for a bunch of sarcastic people to shout insults and rejoinders at a movie screen. It’s like a huge, live-action, sleep-deprived version of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Q: No, I mean why would anyone have the slightest interest in you going to a movie marathon?
A: Point taken, its not like I’m famous or anything (outside of being temporarily internet famous in Australia, of course). Luckily many of my readers are friends, colleagues, and a bit geeky themselves. If you’re going to get a tiny-text-snippet tour through a science fiction marathon, though, I might as well be your guide – I have a fair knowledge of the genre, I used to be a movie reviewer, and I like to make sarcastic comments.
Q: How is this possible?
A: An iPhone, and WiFi or the regular data connection, that’s how. I might also play around with my G1 phone with Android a bit. If my connectivity fails for some reason, I reserve the right to basically give up and pretend I never even mentioned it.
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One other thing I just can’t leave out of this post – when I mentioned this to my coworkers, they poked fun. My coworkers at Google. That’s right, I’m officially too geeky for Google.
Awesome! And really commendable that you are coming all this way. Have to note, though, no patent awarded for novelty: folks have been status-updating (and before status lines, webcamming, liveblogging, etc.) from Marathon ever since Case installed WiFi–about 8 years ago, I’m guessing? 102(b) statutory bar!
Fair enough – I’m not first by any means. In fact, just to push the point, in 1997 I remember seeing a whole family camped out on the stage – mom, dad, and two boys – with matching 486 DX laptops and a router, playing some FPS. And I vaguely remember announcements of IRC channels and whatnot.
It would be cool if the twittering, liveblogging, etc. was coordinated a bit, or at least connected in some adhoc way that made it easy to find.
This is still an experiment for me, though. Does anyone want to volunteer to be the control group and Twitter about not staying up two nights in a row watching movies?
Thanks for the comment!
> It would be cool if the twittering, liveblogging, etc. was coordinated
> a bit, or at least connected in some adhoc way that made it easy to
> find.
You can do that with “hashtags”, just include the word “#scifimarathon” in your tweet, and it shows up on search.twitter.com.
And I am *totally* going to try my best to tweet along, but everyone knows how hectic the staff have it. >_>