Twitter Ball: Step-By-Step Guide to Participating

[Teri (SGP)]

Step 1. Make sure you are registered on Twitter. You will need your username and password to enter the ball.

Step 2. If you wish to have your name entered into our prize drawings, go here and RSVP for the Twitter Ball; you will need to register as a member of Smart Girl Politics to RSVP. Please register at SGP only if you plan to be a supportive member of our group; there will be other opportunities to earn prizes during the ball itself.

Step 3. On the night of Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 9:00 PM Eastern, go to Tweetchat.

Step 4. Enter your Twitter username and password.

Step 5. When Tweetchat asks you what room to enter, type in #SGPball.

Step 6. Congratulations! You are now in the Main Ballroom. Please take note of a few features of Tweetchat: 1.) The hashtag #SGPball will automatically be added to the end of each of your tweets (messages/updates); the bad news is that you will have fewer characters to work with because of that. 2.) The conversation stream you see in this room will be from other people in the room or Twitterers using the #SGPball hashtag. 3.) Since this room is likely to have a very fast-moving conversation, Tweetchat offers a pause button; hit this if things are going too fast and you need to catch up with the conversation or if you’d like to look back and see previous tweets.

Step 7. After some brief introductions, acknowledgements, and instructions, we will open four different “ballrooms,” each with their own discussion and agenda. If you wish to take part in one of these discussions, you will need to move rooms. To do this, hit Change Room in the upper right hand corner of Tweetchat and enter:

#SGP1994 for The Gingrich Room*
#SGP2010 for the Take Back Congress Room*
#SGP1980 for The Reagan Room*
#SGP2012 for the Take Back the Presidency Room*

* see the Agenda for topics and guests

Or you can choose to remain in the SGPball Main Ballroom (#SGPball) for a conversation about the future of Smart Girl Politics; there will also be games and prizes in the this room.

Once you are “inside” a ballroom, there will be a moderator overseeing each discussion. If you have a specific topic you would like covered or a question you would like answered, please submit it to SGP beforehand in the forums. Our goal is to minimize the excess “noise” that can happen in open chats by working from an agenda and addressing the interests of our members and guests.

A few notes:

If you prefer to follow the #SGPball stream, or any of the “ballroom” conversations, through your personal Twitter timeline, it would be helpful for you to be following:

@decidedlyright
@SGPolitics
@pinkelephantpun
@SmartGirlNation

You can follow some or all of the ballrooms by using an application such as TweetDeck or TweetGrid. These allow you to separate multiple conversations into dedicated streams and view them on one screen.

No, you do not have to get dressed up to attend ;) Some Smart Girls intend to show up in their pajamas, while others will certainly go glam. The choice is yours. Smart Guys, this is a black tie optional event.

If you have any questions, please contact Teri Christoph through the SGP site or at [e-mail].

[Melinda Loomis]

It might just be me, but I get an error page with this message when I click on the Step 2 link:

The website may no longer exist, or may have moved.
Try clicking on a suggested link below, or entering another web address.
You were looking for "smartgirlpolitics.ning.comevents"

Hopefully, it's just me, but I tried it a couple of times with the same results.

[Teri (SGP)]

Thanks for pointing it out, Melinda. The link is now fixed.