Let's start before the beginning.

While OystercatcherTF was hatching, I did something that only had one opportunity to be done.

2016 was the centenary of the 1916 Rising, which ultimately led to the creation of the Irish Republic. It occurred to me that if social media had been around a hundred years ago the whole revolution would have been covered, as it happened, on twitter and others. So I set up @1916Live, by posting live the first dawn of the year exactly one hundred years later to the minute. That is how I hoped to cover the activities of The Rising.

I worked with journalist Naomi O'Leary who, crucially gave the timing accuracy that was needed. We expanded to cover other platforms; Facebook, tumblr and 1916live.com. It took a lot of prep. Hundreds of posts were transcribed and scheduled (because revolutions aren't nine-to-five). It was great fun and achieved 377,000 impressions. And just like the Rising itself, after six days of furious activity, it was over.

(First published September 2017)