An OpenParl collaborative twitter account ? (IRC inside)

[Benjamin Ooghe-Tabanou]

Hi everyone !

Here's an easy-to-commit proposal : what about a collaborative
@OpenParl Twitter account that we could all contribute to to relay on
openingparliament's blog items but also on more of our respective
activities?

I've taken the liberty to create it and I'm willing to give the
password to anyone wanting to participate
https://twitter.com/OpenParl

But sharing an account is not very practical, which brings me to the
core of the idea: which is to rise back from the dead the IRC
discussion channel for tech (but also non-techs!) OpenParliament
folks, where we can chat, but also from now on follow what's happening
regarding the declaration and participate to the Twitter acocunt:

The IRC channel was opened on irc.freenode.net (channel
#openparliament for people using a dedicated software, or
<http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#openparliament> for a simple
webaccess) while in DC last may and a few of us still hang out
sometimes there.

I've added there a "bot" similar to the one we developped for Regards
Citoyens's activities called openparl. This means there is this
"openparl" person on the discussion channel which is actually a
software running to realize multiple tasks on demand.
Running « !help » gives a general view of these.

The interest of this specific "bot" is to provide among classical
functions the possibility to:
- follow live rss and tweets for selected subjects (I've already set
#OpenParl and other similar ones)
- prepare and send twitter messages, including retweets, direct messages, ...

I've set it in a totally open way, which means anyone on the
#openparliament IRC channel can send tweets from the @OpenParl account
For instance here's how I posted some of the first messages :

!twitter Enters the collaborative account for Parliament #Transparency
advocates all over the world! Join us on IRC!
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#openparliament #OpenParl

!rt 261886066850684928

Not sure this will convince many more people to join us on IRC but
that's a try ! ;)

Benjamin for Regards Citoyens

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Thanks Benjamin,

I just proved that someone who neglected to pay attention in Intro to Computer Science at university can tweet using the @OpenParl account through the IRC channel. Here's the evidence: https://twitter.com/OpenParl/status/262929138690711553.

Just to reiterate for people as tech talented as myself, all you have to do to post a tweet through the IRC channel is write !twitter before your message.

To retweet, just copy the number at the end of the URL assigned to the tweet and enter !rt beforehand. So, to retweet the message corresponding with the address I provided above, one would simply type: !rt 262929138690711553

Thanks Benjamin for taking the initiative on this!

Best,

Andrew

--
Andrew G. Mandelbaum

Senior Program Officer, Governance

National Democratic Institute

www.ndi.org

OpeningParliament.org  

Twitter: agm3dc

Phone: 202-728-5552

Skype: agm3jordan

Email: amand...@ndi.org

National Democratic Institute

455 Massachusetts Ave., NW, 8^th Floor

Washington, DC  20001