Imagine - it is the start of the day. You are in your hometown - mythic diner - Laura, your favorite waitress knows your order by heart. The coffee is at hand - the room is full of friends - some of whom you over hear talking - some you talk to directly - in the background is the radio playing with the days news and stuff - eggs and bacon are on their way.
What could be better? But sadly it's all a nostalgic dream from the past. But is it?
My morning routine is very much like that now with the Bryant Park Project from NPR and Twitter.
Even before the show - Laura Conaway and I often share our news - from me it's usually a weather report (We are socked in again today by the way) - from her it's often about the show schedule and who is eating what - as the show begins - I am on PEI so no way of any chance of listening on air - I am plugged into the web with my USB phones - must get Bluetooth so I can move around more.
I am usually posting and doing my email etc - I listen to the show and catch up with all my morning Twitter buds who are all over the world. Again its often a hello, the weather - what my day is looking like. Hugh at GapingVoid has been going through a personal transformation and we are all part of that. Luis at elsua has been having internet problems and has just got back from a long break. Johnnie is musing about WOW often. David Gurteen is on the road - Bangkok today. James Governor is telling us of a friend who has cancer - There are also news flashes - just in Stocks fall sharply in Asia. Twitter is the Diner!
As the show builds formally on air/on the web - there is a growing back channel chat going on between the crew in NYK and the Twit fans - real time chat and banter - just as in the diner.
We are not saving the world on Twitter but this "Diner" our favorite "Second Place" is emerging as the Twitter group thickens up.
Laura at BPP and I both felt this shift in the last few days - we have never met and until yesterday never spoke - just Twittered. So we had a phone date after the show. I wanted to know if she was feeling the same way about how Twitter was making the show more human?
Here is the gang with Steve Martin.
Laura told me that there was "No Plan" for Twitter - they just did it. For a while she was very reserved and not personal. Like at a high school dance in the first hour. Then one early morning when she was in very early, she saw that I was about - I have farmer's hours. She said "Hi". Wow - for me it was a childhood dream come true.
When I was a kid in the 1950's, I always knew that there was a person in that radio (I grew up before TV!!!) and bingo now nearly 60, it was true. There was a person in that radio and she was Laura.
From this small beginning Laura talked to others and the "Diner" started to emerge. (PS as I type this, many of us are wishing Jon Husband Happy Birthday on Twitter).The listener started to become part of the show - not in air - but with the crew. As they did stuff on air, they got not just feedback but stimulation and vice versa.
"Radio is a linear medium" Laura reminded me. "You have to listen to the end to get what we do. Twitter with its short form - enables us to introduce short cuts". From my part it introduces the many to many while the one to many is still going. This I think is the future if Radio and TV. To wrap the Program with a society.
As the Twitter community builds around the show - Laura found the word "Accretion" building in small layers - the show becomes more vibrant and alive. My bet is that there is a tipping point where actually life itself emerges. So to see if she can accelerate this process, Laura is going to invite the heavy BPP Twitter users into a group.
Our hope is that with an inner circle of regulars at the BPP Diner we can bump the energy up even higher.
I have been very negative about a lot of what is going on recently but here - in this "accident" - I am hopeful that we are witnessing the emergence of a model for how to use the power of the web to build a better radio and hence TV product.
Wrap the content in a community.
