The Cedric gleamed as it pushed through the white open waters. Up on deck, a band played music in the morning and evening. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá enjoyed the music, praised the musicians, and treated them with a generous  £4 tip.

The morning of April 5, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá strolled up and down the deck observing the volcanic peaks of the Azores through his field glass. By afternoon, his companions, as well some curious observers, gathered in the salon of the ship to be in his company. Among them was an American newspaper publisher. He first asked ‘Abdu’l-Bahá about Persia and then inquired about his journey to America.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained the purpose of his trip: “I am going to America at the invitation of peace congresses, as the fundamental principles of this Cause are the equality of the rights of men. As this age is the age of lights and the century of mysteries, this lofty purpose is sure to be universally acknowledged …”

The newspaper publisher was delighted. He wanted to kiss ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s hands, but ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gently stopped him and instead presented him with his prayer beads.

Stay tuned for our next update, April 6.

In Part 1 of this blog post, I told the story of how my good friend Jonathan Menon and I decided to use Twitter to deliver “real time history” about the centenary of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to America. All this despite a confession that I loathe Twitter. This was two years ago. Now, a few days from launch, I thought I’d share something of how 239 Days in America evolved. 

My disdain for Twitter arose from the fact that I saw it as part of the continuing slide of literacy and communication that has come with technologies such as email and texting. (I once got an email resume from a student looking for job in the media industry with the one word subject heading: “hey…”)

But Jonathan and I quickly realized that Twitter just couldn’t do the story justice on its own, and that unfolding a narrative solely via hourly tweets would grow thin pretty quickly. We decided to focus Twitter’s use on delivering a “real-time itinerary” of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s journey, so you could follow his activities—where he goes and whom he meets—every day. Daily magazine-style articles would accompany it. Twitter would present events in a real-time flow, while the articles would flesh out the story in rich biographical detail.

You’ll get to read these articles starting April 11th. We hope you enjoy them. 

Here’s the rest of the story in fast-forward: We got considerable advice on evolving our social media strategy from a guru in the field, found an executive producer who chased much needed resources and money, added discussion forums, and added two wonderful full-time staff to coordinate details, develop content, manage the social media strategy, and promote it all. I’d like to send out a BIG THANKS to all of them now.

239 Days in America has only just begun. It will unfold over 239 days. We will present a range of content each day, but a social media project depends on an active network of interested people to make it successful. 

We hope you join the conversation. And please, share us with your own social networks!

Rob Sockett
Producer

As the Cedric neared American shores, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá received Marconi wireless messages from California and Chicago. “We shall be at sea another day,” he said to his travel companions. “Steam power is truly a wonderful thing. If there were no such power, how would the vast oceans have been crossed?”

 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spent much of the final days of the trip talking about the need for love and unity among humankind, and the destructive effects of prejudice, blind imitation, and disunity. Each morning, he said prayers with his travel companions. While the long journey from Egypt had mostly been recuperative, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá found he had little appetite, limiting himself to tea and soup. 

On April 10, a wireless message arrived from New York welcoming ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to America. The Cedric was just over a hundred miles from shore. At 9 p.m. that night, the lights of Long Island and New Jersey appeared in the distance. The Cedric anchored offshore near the breakwater, ready to enter New York harbor the next morning.

239 Days in America begins April 11. Please join us!

My name is Gazalle and I am the Social Media Editor at 239 Days in America. On the 12^th of January I ran into Caitlin by coincidence. It was a dark night in Toronto and I was meeting a few friends for dinner. As I was paying for parking at a lot near University Avenue and Adelaide someone called my name. The person was wearing a hood. After I got over my fear I realized it was Caitlin Jones!  She mentioned she had emailed me about a social media position for a project called 239 Days in America. I never got the email because she had sent it to the wrong address.

239 Days in America sounded like an interesting but confusing opportunity. It was hard for me to grasp it. It seemed like they wanted to tell a story using many social platforms. The problem was that these crazy lunatics were talking in the present tense about something that happened 100 years ago!

I joined the project because it seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Coming from a corporate background in digital media to a digital humanities project has been quite a change but I’ve seen this project unfold over the 50 days. I am enjoying the features just like everyone else, but since our project is supposed to be a “social media documentary” I think we need to do a better job at bringing YOU into the conversation. 

I will be posting regularly on this blog to share with you the insides and challenges that we are facing, and I really want to invite your comments, thoughts and criticism of what we are doing.

Gazalle Ardekani

You may have noticed that at the top of each Daily Feature there is a greyed-out tab called “STORIFY.” It looks like this:

Storify is a new web app that enables people to “curate” social stories. That means that we can take all of the tweets that we have sent during each day, all your responses to them, and all your comments on Facebook and 239days.com and put them all together in one place at the end of each day. This way we can archive all the conversations we have and keep them forever. 

For example, here’s an image of the Storify we have completed for Day 60, when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is in Philadelphia. Click here to go to the actual Storify page.

Storify has sharing buttons of its own along the top right of the Storify page. You can comment on the page directly to Twitter and Facebook, and you can share it, and you can even embed it in your own web pages if you like. Join Storify yourself to follow thousands of other social stories.

Every day we choose the best comments and tweets to include in our daily Storify feed. The more you comment on the social networks we use, the more you will show up in the feed. (But only if what you say is interesting enough!)

If you want to find out more about Storify go to: www.storify.com

Please let us know how you like it!