Hey there Our Spring Breakers---Harry here. It has been awesome getting to know those of you that I've been able to meet, and I really, sincerely, appreciate the interest you have taken in the new media campaigns to spread our work that I've been talking about! However, now is the time to put the peddle to the meddle and make good on a lot of nice words, and below this page will be one of our hubs to do it.

So let's go---HELP BREAK THE SILENCE ON OUR SPRING BREAK!

Come on, you know you want to! Click here to head to the Our Spring Break video hub to find videos, and below you'll find some suggestions on how we can start promoting and working on them. This page is really a work in progress, and familiarizing yourself with the wiki in general is 100% the first priority, but as you go through try thinking of different ways you'd like to help spread the media content we have!

Our Spring Break Twitter outreach

As I've talked about ad nauseum, a Twitter campaign is one of our best tactics at achieving major mainstream media attention. Journalists and TV pundits all want to display their new media savvy, so let's put them in touch with some new media savvy activism from young people who they wish they were nearly as cool us (yeah, I said it!).

Here's the plan:

1. Sign up for a Twitter account. Easy. Takes two seconds. Dont be lazy, don't pretend activism is still in the 1960's, do it!

2. Twitter is not that hard to navigate once you know how to do it, but here are some tips to get you started:

• Twitter is essentially the status bar and the news feed on Facebook. If you look at the changes Facebook has made, they are continually trying to copy Twitter (and if Facebook is switching up to compete with them, you know they're on to something!)
• Twitter only lets you type 140 characters. It's their thing, as it makes it easy to read a ton of different short statements from a lot of people quickly.
• You don't have "friends" on Twitter, you have "followers" and you "follow" others (yes, it reminds me of middle school clique terminology too...)
• The people whom you follow's tweets (think status update/the new share bar thing Facebook has now) will show up on your front page (equivalent of Facebook newsfeed). People who follow you will likewise see your tweets, but you won't see theirs without clicking their profile unless you follow them back.
• There are two main ways to communicate with other Twitterers:
  
  • @ replies: All you do is type the "@" symbol before someone's Twitter profile name and your post will show up in their @ reply box and on their profile page (again, newsfeed). We will be doing this a TON, as it's the most open way to get in touch with people as their followers will also be able to see your tweet
  • Direct message: This is just like an email. If someone direct messages you you can respond that way as they probably want a private conversation (and that could be awesome, like "email me more" or "I want to interview you"), but our initial engagement should be through the @ reply.

3. What should we be tweeting? Well, that will change as we develop the different media content from the event (I'm most excited to make mashup music videos at Remix America---much more to come on that soon), but for now any sort of engagement with a journalist/TV pundit would be helpful. I'll have more specific suggetsions on this soon as we move on, but for now you can click the Our Spring Break blog links if you want to relay one of those posts.

4. Who should we be targeting? Below you'll find an initial list ordered by priority of who I think we should start with---namely, extensive MSNBC outreach---but be creative! Search around! Have a favorite person in mainstream media? New Media? Independent media? Search for them on Twitter and give it a go!

• David Shuster from MSNBC: he has his own show at 7 PM E and has been one of if not the most enthusiastic about Twitter outreach in the MSM that I have seen--he even has a segment of his show called "Twitter time". He's our main target. Check out his profile, and start messaging him (and look out for me to start bugging you to do it and then do it more!)
• Rachel Maddow from MSNBC: she would be incredible to get in touch with, but she has not been as gung ho as Shuster is on Twitter (almost no one is). There probably isn't anyone in the MSM who cares more about what we have to say, so look out for me to bug you about @replying her too!
• Tamron Hall from MSNBC: she is a day time host and has also been extremely enthusiastic.
• Norah Odonnell from MSNBC: another day time host, she hasn't mentioned it as often as Shuster (no one does) or Tamron but she has a lot of air time to talk about these kind of issues.
• MSNBC's general twitter account: not sure who is checking it, so let's find out!
• MSNBC Politics' general twitter account: let's find this out too!