Even the small guy can do great things

I have to leave a quick note here because I jumped into a little experiment with Twitter in the last couple of days. I decided to see if mid-Missouri would be interested in tweeting (that's the verb used when you want to talk about that act of posting something on Twitter) politics leading up to election day (using a tag of #sd08). Once we all go to the polls, I'm also asking mid-Mo tweeters to send a post or two while they're casting their ballot (using an additional tag of #votereport)

The #sd08 tag means it's a part of Smart Decision '08. That's a site that I have created with the help of committed students and professionals affiliated with a number of newsrooms in Columbia, MO. It has been my baby project for quite a while. One election day, I'm hoping mid-Missouri Twitter users will add an additional tag to help us keep track of their experience in the polls: #votereport. It's a quest created nationally by Twitter.com. Hopefully Twitter users across the country will let us know what it's really like when they cast a ballot. It's also a way to see where things are going wrong. When I was talking to a representative at Twitter, I hear about this tweet:

OH_observers: #EPOH from 866 report -fake election officials letting people vote from parking lot in Columbus #votereport #43204 http://tinyurl.com/6nfrmw

I think that's so cool that we can all participate and talk about experiences during the election year. I like this involvement so much that I'm producing a four hour webcast involving KOMU-TV, KBIA-FM, The Columbia Missourian and Newsy.com. During the webcast, you'll be able to see details about what people are talking about from our Blog Watch Desk and I'll have a segment where my Twitter watchers will let us know what's going on. We're also inviting the public to attend an election watch party as we record the webcast. We'll check in with the participants and see what they're talking about. It's very exciting and it will be interesting to see what really happens. Four newsrooms. Four hours. Wow. You can watch it election night 8:00pm-midnight Central Time from SmartDecision08.com.