Today my Twitter On Paper arrived!   For those of you who don’t know about this project, a guy named Sam Potts in Brooklyn, NY, decided that he would allow people to request that he write down, on paper, any Tweet he had previously made and mail it to the requesting person, free of charge.   He has just finished the project, capped at 1,000 hand-written and mailed Tweets, and I am now possessing one of them because I requested one before he finished — this is so cool!

So, here’s the envelope as it arrived.    Note that Sam has some incredibly good handwriting:

Opening the envelope, I find two sheets of paper, one with a greeting from Sam on it, the other with my Tweet-on-Paper:

The greeting sheet reads, “Thank you for participating in Twitter on Paper.   You’re always welcome to send something* back, if you like, no obligation!    Sam Potts, Somestreet, Brooklyn, NY 11215   *of equal or lesser value, of course!”

I will definitely be sending something back to Sam, but I have to think of something really creative and good.   I want to thank him for trying something pretty novel and curious and footing the entire bill for it.

My Tweet-on-Paper:

It reads:   “Ok no kidding people — when you get your ToP, do not blog about it.   Do not spread the word in any way.  This thing is already out of hand.” and it is stamped, “Jun 8 2009“.

The rules of Twitter-on-Paper stated that requestors had to specify a tweet that Sam had made himself, because he is the only owner of his own Tweets and the only one that has the legal copyright to distribute them as he wishes.   I picked the above Tweet because it’s kinda ironic — he’s Tweeting about the very thing that I requested.    A local black hole ought to open up near here any moment…

I think I’ll go and find a suitable frame for this little piece of Internet culture — after all, who knows in 5 years where Twitter and so forth will be?

A huge thanks to Sam Potts and his curiously fun little project — I love my Twitter on Paper!

Bloggers of the World! I would like to run a Blog-Off:   a contest between bloggers with some monetary awards and some contributions to charity as a result (plus, fame, fortune, and lots of prestige), but I’d like to know how many people would be interested in participating.    If this sounds interesting, read on:

The basic format would be something like this:    You get a subject and you have to write a blog post on your own blog about it by a certain day of the week.    Then everyone else would have until the end of the week to read and vote for the top 3 entries.   This continues for several rounds until a winner is declared.

The details of it can be worked out later, but that’s the basic idea.    Everyone contributes a dollar amount (something around $10-$20 USD) to the cause and at the end, the winner(s) get a portion (50% split up between them) and the other 50% goes to a charity.    Right now I’m thinking about the March of Dimes, but I’m open to suggestions.

The advantages are that you get ideas to write blog posts about, you get some incentive to read other blogs, and you get to meet some great people.     Disadvantages are that you’re on a bit of a schedule to get things written and read (gotta keep it moving), but most people find a rhythm that works for them and it’s not too bad.

I participated in several Blog-Offs for cancer ran by Courtney of Five Second Dance Party and had a great time, plus met a bunch of terribly interesting people.    I highly recommend it if you haven’t tried it before, and if you are a seasoned veteran, why not jump in again?

If you are interested in hearing more — NO committment yet — please leave a comment on this post or use the “Contact Me” link to drop me a line.     Hopefully we can get a good whack of people together and have a bunch of fun!

Alan Parsons Project – Eye in the Sky

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