Last night, I went to the Nationals stadium to watch them play the Cubs.  The Cubs won 3 to 1; Mark Viera of the Washington Post attributed it to their inability to convert at the plate (I tend to agree).

There were a few highlight-reel-worthy plays, threat of rain (a threat which never came to fruition, save a few drops) and plenty of tasty snacks (proof-positive of the snack-age below, photo credit: Frank Gruber):

Leslie Bradshaw enjoys Nachos at Nats Game

Venturing out with a solid crew from the DC technology community, I have a few post-mortem observations to make of the experience.  While we are certainly a biased sampling of hyper tech, tweet and device users, I do believe our experience of the game is one that is, in some ways, the future of how we as humans experience collective events like baseball games, concerts and rallies.  Here are my five pillars of evidence:

1. DIGITAL PAYMENT.  Frank secured a block of tickets and we used PayPal to pay him back.  Making transactions through debit, auto, code and cloud technologies are the future. Good-bye late-payments to friends and dollars and coins; hello complete market efficiency.

2. TARGETED TEXTING + COUPONS.  During the game, the HD jumbotron asked the stadium to text in which year Mrs. Doubtfire and the Counting Crows experienced their pop-culture accent (1993, I believe).  After texting in his answer, Nick received a text coupon that notified him he’d be getting 25% off of his next ticket purchase.  Those of us who fancy themselves lay economists, the coupon is one of the oldest tricks in the book: give the consumer a discount and bring someone in the door who might not have come otherwise, and, once they are there, have them bring others and spend more money.  Cost / benefit analysis: seller’s benefit received outweighs cost.

3. TAGGING AND SOCIAL MEDIA.  Between the 12 of us, we generated around 40 tweets (lower than I thought, but I did do an official data collection today, New Media Strategies style) and close to 100 photos (some of which made their way to real-time TwitPics and Facebook mobile posts, the rest of which came through Frank and Jimmy’s Flickr and Facebook albums within 12 hours of the event).  In fact, the reason I knew about the photos making it online, aside from being present when they were taken (duh), was because I was tagged 11 times on Facebook and tweeted at about a dozen times.  I also think a Google alert or two was tripped for my name.  Further, by using the hashtags #Nats, #Cubs and #NatsWP (Washington Post’s special tag, on site “Nationals Park Fan Tweets” — which could use some JESS3 love, BTW), I was able to interact with others at and / or watching the game.

4. RELATIONAL DATA ABOUT FRIENDS.  Two things here. Just about everyone in our group of 12 had iPhones (except me; I am a die-hard BlackBerry fan, FWIW).  A large percentage of the iPhone’rs also had the social, geo, city-exploring app Four Square.  They competitively “checked in” at the stadium and two bars we hit up following the game.  These actions gave them extra points and insights about preferred dinning options (e.g., ‘Justin T. recommends the pizza at Tunnicliff’s‘).  In addition to Four Square, all 12 of us have at least a Twitter account and most everyone also has one or more blogs.  To this point, Frank provided us with a run-down of who was going to be there in advance over email, batter-roster-style-meets-media-list. In addition to keeping Frank’s Twitter handle handy work in tact, I’ve linked everyone to their blog, portfolio or otherwise preferred / relevant link online.  The fact that I can do this with all 12 people in and of itself further reinforces my thesis.

  1. Nick O’Neill @allnick
  2. Peter LaMotte @peterlamotte
  3. Jen Consalvo @noreaster
  4. Frank Gruber @frankgruber
  5. Jimmy Gardner @jjgardner3
  6. Shana Glickfield @dcconcierge
  7. Justin Thorp @thorpus
  8. Leslie Bradshaw @lesliebradshaw
  9. Jesse Thomas @jess3
  10. Mark Bebawy @markbebawy
  11. Kristin Pryor @krkipp99
  12. Erica Anderson @ericaamerica

5. CITIZEN JOURNALISM / UGC. Aside from the dozens of tweets and pictures that we collectively created, I was also fortunate to share a cab ride home with Erica Anderson (a.k.a., “Erica America“) who captured really simple, yet poignant footage of the Department of Transportation’s (among other gov departments) “lights on” policy past midnight on a Friday.  A skillful journalist in her own right, having reported as part of the street team crew for MTV during the 2008 Elections and under the tutelage of Helen Thomas, among other things, Erica grabbed her flipcam and produced a video within minutes.  Frank Gruber is also in the process of compiling a “Summer Special” video, based on clips he shot at the game.  Again, biased tech-sampling aside, the barriers to enter into the world of video production have nearly been eliminated.  Nothing new to most people, but just one more point to make here in my post-mortem round-up. Erica’s video, shot from our cab on the way home (”Federal Government Burns the Money”):

All of this to say: I had a great time, it was well planned and executed, heavily documented and definitely something I would love to do again. Team photo below (credit: Jimmy Gardner).

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