Programmers get front row seat to history, bring Twitter along

November 4, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

Supporters of presidential candidate Barack Obama may remember hearing that if they donated one last time over the weekend, they could win a “front row seat to history” — in other words, 10 donors won seats at Obama’s election night event. If you’re like me, you probably dismissed that message as an insane longshot, along the lines of winning the lottery.

Well, it looks like someone from the tech world was luckier and more generous than me. Bruce Williams, a programmer with Ruby on Rails management company FiveRuns will get to watch in person as Obama (probably) celebrates his election as the nation’s first black president. Williams is bringing fellow Rails programmer Damon Clinkscales along, and they’re keeping the rest of the tech world updated via micro-messaging service Twitter.

Even better, they’ve thrown together a website, Tweet Row to History, where users can see all their election-related tweets in one place. Williams says the app isn’t quite finished yet, and for now it’s dominated by mundane, “boarding a plane”-type updates. But tonight, this may be as close to the center of the action as most of us will get. I’ll definitely be watching.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Mike
    Obama is HALF Black. His father is Black and his mother is White. So does that make him Black? Using that logic you can just as easily say he is White. He's half black and Half white.
  • I've seen some of the online discussions about this, which usually become rather toxic so I'd rather not get into a long argument about it. But I'm pretty sure Obama will be remembered as the nation's first black president.

    [Insert pretentious statement about how race is a social construct here.]
  • How cool! :D I will be watching for sure. Although, I have to say, if I were lucky enough to be there, I'm not sure I would be unselfish enough to give up the joy of just absorbing the moment to provide a play-by-play on Twitter. It's very cool of them to use this opportunity that way.
  • Ha. True.
  • codefluency
    It was a real honor to be able to attend. Here are some photos/videos of the event from our perspective, if anyone's interested; we'll be adding more in the upcoming days.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalnomad
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/codefluency
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNo3oZHxvSo