Inauguration 2009

The world is abuzz with anticipation as Washington D.C. gears up for the inauguration of the 44th president elect, Barack Obama. This election is historic for everyone, especially the global black community. With the inauguration 5 days away, I decided to see what was happening in the online world so that we can all participate, if we aren’t able to be there in person or watching from home.

Black Sites:

Are you going to the Inauguration?  BET wants your help to mark this occasion.  They have launched the Yes We Will microsite with a companion Flickr group for people to participate in the festivities and share photos of this historic inauguration.  There is a community section on the site that is a little disappointing, as the aim seems to be to get people to buy ringtones from BET and not really instigate community discourse, and I only found the Flickr community by doing a search on my own outside of BET.com.  I have seen things floating around about other initiatives BET.com is supposed to be doing, but I’ve not found them yet.  If you’ve seen Obama and Me, Next Stop, or Kids for Obama on their site, share the link.

BlackBottom.com live streamed the election to more than 50,000 users, and now they have a message in their footer letting users know they will be live streaming the event on their inauguration channel. There isn’t much info there yet, but I’m sure more will come up as the event gets closer. I love the background though.

Honestly, I must say I am disappointed with Black sites and that they aren’t doing more online to mark this historic event.  I was hoping to see a big box on everyone’s site with a section about the inauguration with some type of soundoff board so the community could share their thoughts or some variation of that especially since producing something online for the event is often the more cost effective alternative to having a Ball.  I do enjoy that Essence.com reskinned their site and changed the tagline to “Your Voice, Your Inauguration, Your Life” for the event though.  Still, going through their community site, there weren’t any inauguration groups.

Ebony/Jet does have an Inauguration 2009 section, but it is not very robust.  EVIPList.com also has an Inauguration event site, InauguralEventsDC.com ,in case you’re looking for some place to go

The Event:
Inauguration Report is a collaborative journalism project  being produced by NPR.org, CBS News and American  University.  It looks pretty fun.  They are also using twitter and asking people to use #dctrip09 to mark road trip tweets and #inaug09 for event tweets.  Though not integrated yet, other social networks such as Flickr are supposed to be added.  There is also an iPhone app for easy participation.

Mashable pointed us to Joost as well.  Joost will be live streaming the inauguration online on their Everything Obama Channel.

Official Sites:
Though not there yet, the Presidential Inaugural Committee will be live streaming some events as well.  They have a big box for the live streaming of the Neighborhood Ball.  Basically, the site is a continuation of the awesome social media campaign of the election.  That means Twitter, YouTube and Flickr integration.

The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies is also trying to up their interactive ante.   They have added social networking bookmark links to share information from the different pages, interactive Google maps, and will also be streaming the swearing in.  They also have fun stuff like a full menu and recipes for the luncheon so you can host your own.

Have you found any good sites about the inauguration or are you participating in any fun online activities to commemorate?