Update
Lot of moving pieces this week so apologies for the not quite eloquent post. Things accomplished this week:
1. Politicon. I'm going to this politics + media conference in LA this weekend with Lady Parts Justice, a non-profit I work with. Described as "the Comic Con of politics," I think this event will give me a boost in terms of 1) finding the talent portion of my show, and 2) giving me a chance to attend panels that discuss politics, media, comedy, and political participation all in one convenient place.
2. Venues. The venue search is well under way and should be finalized by the end of this week. Chances are 80% that I'll be going with Littlefield, a well known venue for just-under-mainstream indie comics and live music in Brooklyn. They have Sunday, November 8th open and getting a weekend date is key. I'm also looking at the Striker theater at the PIT.
3. Twitterbot. I started work on a quick and easy Twitterbot - one element of my show. The point of the bot is to tweet congratulatory messages (with accompanying GIFs) to anyone who tweets that they voted in past elections. I got it to work but right now it only retweets people it follows on a list. I am going to meet with Luke later this week to fine tune it. In the following screen grabs, you can see that it retweets when messages where it is mentioned (but at the moment, it is only listening to pre-defined users in a list, instead of Twitter at large):
4. Website. I know, I know! No website! But it's done already (minus hosting). The site is just a reference spot to show to sponsors. Because I will definitely need sponsors. The theaters above come with hefty price tags.
5. I met with Allison Goldberg, co-creator of Blogologues, to get some advice on audience engagement in live theater, integrating tech aspects into shows, and lots of production nitty gritty (particularly in terms of sponsorship and the $$ aspect). Here is a photo of my notes, including some ideas that came to me as a result of our conversation:
As you can see, the concept of people's social networks were a dominant player in both the show's content as well as its production.
6. Celine and I met yesterday to go over our progress and where we are at. Both of us have been prioritizing our projects over paper because we both come from writing backgrounds and are more concerned about being able to finish what we are working on. A slightly more constrained timeline for the paper does not seem to be a worry for either of us.