The most recent of these tweet-based opportunities involved a quick trip I made Wednesday to our nation's capitol to hobnob with President Barack Obama at the White House. I was one of the 50 lucky Twitter users invited by the administration to attend the president's first ever . How'd I score that sweet opportunity?
The key factors were a) having a job that keeps me at my computer all day, and b) the . I happened to check Twitter at precisely the moment that the @whitehouse account . I clicked on the link, and ended up filling out a brief form to apply to attend the Town Hall in person. The form included a 140-character field to explain why you should get picked. I filled out the whole form in less than a minute, figuring it was a mostly useless shot in the dark.
A couple days later, I had an email in my inbox inviting me to the event, presuming I passed a security clearance. (I did.) So on Wednesday, I drove five hours to Washington DC, walked to the White House from the parking garage on I Street, and knew I'd found the correct entrance when I saw a bunch of well-dressed 20- and 30-somethings milling about with smartphones in their hands.
The White House event was awesome. Not only did I , we Twitter guests had permission to take photographs inside the White House, which isn't something every visitor gets to do. And, of course we were asked to live tweet during Obama's session with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. I will admit that I felt some hesitation tapping away at my iPhone while sitting mere feet from the leader of the free world. The exceedingly lousy 3G reception in the East Room helped me feel less guilty about the fact that I spent more time enjoying the surreality of the moment than I did posting quips about the event on Twitter.
After the Town Hall's conclusion, the Twitter 50 were granted an exclusive roundtable discussion at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, sitting with United States Chief Technical Officer Aneesh Chopra, White House Director of New Media Macon Phillips, and Dorsey. That discussion was lively and largely tech-focused, covering topics ranging from the Obama administration's assorted tech initiatives (including , which Chopra billed as "Expedia for personal health insurance costs") and the state of bandwidth ability in the U.S. (A National Wireless Initiative would allow the companies that currently own government-assigned rights to various parts of the wireless spectrum to trade those rights to other companies that might better exploit the spectrum. Proceeds of those trades would be used on deficit reduction and developing a 4G broadband network for public safety.)