Twitter Project

Greetings, friends and readers.

I’m starting a project and I think it’s going to be fun. I’m looking for volunteers and I expect the time commitment to be very small. I’m thinking 15-30 minutes a week, for maybe 15-20 weeks.

This summer I tweeted the Battle of Gettysburg. I found journals of fifteen Civil War Soldiers, and I followed them in ‘real time’, tweeting as I wen. I did this for about two and a half months. The end result for those that followed was the opportunity to experience history in ‘real time’, from original sources.

The Gettysburg project attracted attention from folks in the LBJ Presidential library, the National Archives, and historians from around the US. We ended up with almost a thousand followers.

I spoke with my brother the other day and he mentioned how the first pioneer group (those that came with Brigham Young) was by far the best documented. He said that the people who came over knew they were involved in an historic event,and so they kept good journals.

What I would like to do is recreate this pioneer trek in real time, on the right day. So by next July 24, Brigham Young will ‘tweet’, “This is the right place,drive on.”

Anybody who volunteers will be given a journal of a person or family; they will be responsible for coming up with tweets for that person for each day of the trek. However, we will do this in advance in a Google spreadsheet. This way you can sit down, come up with tweets for a week or two, and then I will take care of it from there. You do NOT need to sign up for or know how to use twitter. As I mentioned, I suspect that it will only take 10-20 hours to do a complete journal, and you can spread it out over the next several months.

If anybody is interested, leave a comment here, and I’ll be in touch.