The RNC 2016 app

I found this in Politico's "Playbook" email today. Playbook is one of the most popular news emails for policy wonks, and I recommend it. It does tend to be written in this boring style, however.

STATE OF THE ART - Republican National Convention app launches: "Users will be able to watch our YouTube 360-degree livestream broadcast of the convention floor ... stay up-to-date on the Convention schedule, find your way around Cleveland and the Convention Complex [including the nearest restroom], check out your favorite speeches, or watch the proceedings live." Screenshot http://bit.ly/29w7nxA ... The app in the Apple Store  http://apple.co/29vRJ5j ... Google Play  http://bit.ly/29jJXXs

If you're a policy wonk, you're used to boring. If you want to be a journalist, get used to boring because it's your job to translate the boring -- when it's significant -- into the interesting.

In the RNC course Dr. Swearingen and I will be teaching next week and the final week of July, some of the readings will be things like the Republican National Convention's rules from previous year(s). "BORING!" you may say. But this year, journalists have to read them because they are definitely NOT going to be boring this year. Fortunately, we have lots of journalists preparing to translate them for us, into something interesting. I want you to watch how they do it.

In this course, we are not only going to make you blog, I'm also going to make my CO students tweet. I am trying to figure out what's a fair number of tweets to expect from you. I have settled on 50, which would be the total expected during the entire three weeks, including the convention week. However, the rule is YOU HAVE TO BE THERE to make tweets that count. That is, you must be in attendance at the event you are tweeting about. And you must use a special course hashtag, #CO399, though you can also use whatever turns out to be the trending hashtag at the time. You will learn how to do this in class, but if you are doing this online, I will also post (I hope) a Jing -- a narrated screenshot video showing you how to do this, in case you don't know how. This will be a first for me. I have just downloaded Jing, which is an app that allows you to do this. I'll post it here when it's done. That might not be today :)

I am considering making it possible for you to "live tweet" as if you were at the actual convention, which will be televised on the app described above. Let me know in the Comments if you think this is a good idea.

Have a great day!
Dr. B