My First Twitter Contest As A Curator!

I was pleasantly surprised when Team Photokatha* offered me an opportunity as curator of their Twitter handle - @photokatha.

I was to conduct their weekly #Travelkatha quiz.

So far I had been on the other side of curation- as an avid Twitter-Contest player! Role-reversal then!

As I have never done curation before and also owing to my most important and scarce resource- time, I wanted to postpone the chance. But, then my love for travel & quizzing made me pretty excited.

Also, I have been planning to write about Odisha in my Blog for long. I decided that this was my chance to cover Odisha in the Quiz as I feel this state needs focus & publicity as many people aren’t even aware of its natural wonders & art & architectural treasures. 

The date and time for the #Travelkatha Quiz was fixed for January 17^th 2014 at 3 PM @photokatha 

The friendly team was constantly in touch with me all throughout. They designed and shared the cool Banners.

Based on the team’s instructions, I managed to do a decent job that they were too kind to acknowledge & encourage!

There was great participation. Many Tweeps were very active and took part enthusiastically. I wish to thank all those who contributed answers to the questions and appreciate their efforts to share facts and images about Odisha. 

It sure increased our Odisha knowledge.

I had noticed the efforts of everyone and had read every single tweet. Team Photokatha had also chipped in throughout.

The Quiz was over at 7 PM. 

Later, after the Quiz ended, I signed off and logged on to my Twitter account.

I wanted to personally tweet and thank all those who had joined in and were engaged… I had even started doing so & then I stopped when I realized that it’s a good number & I need to invest more time and effort to do that! Hence, sent a general tweet!

This is to thank all the participants, contributors & Team Photokatha. 
You all are awesome! THANKS! 

I was so involved with the Odisha Quiz that I skipped lunch yesterday and even missed the Breaking News… 

I wish I were Santa Claus- I’d gift everyone! For this Quiz, two winners will get the two prizes. But, for me, all are winners. 

I know how disappointed one feels when not picked as a winner. 

Being a Curator, I realized many things.

My learnings-

1. Fast Internet Connectivity is needed to handle so many tweets! My Internet decided to ditch me even when I was not playing a contest, rather curating one! (Harrowing time with a lag in posting tweets while trying to reestablish internet connection!)
   
   
2. Tweet analysis, deserving winners judgment & great curation is challenging when the participants are so many and unfortunately only 1-2 can be declared winners.
   
   
3. Sharing all event-related info and timely response to all queries is important & demands a sharp eye for detail & effort! Curator needs to be responsible!
   
   
4. Despite an honest attempt, a novice curator can commit mistakes in haste, yet receive kind words! I made a mental note of all the lessons I learnt. This was a learning-experience.

5. Retweeting & Favoriting all the tweets is not possible! Some tweets had awesome facts but were in ALL CAPS, others had spelling errors of facts... 

   
   

If you wish to be Curator, contact @photokatha :)

*About Photokatha

Photokatha believes in story telling via photographs. Be it your travel expeditions or foodie escapes, you can share your stories with them.

Check out the Questions and Answers of the Odisha Twitter Quiz I compiled and curated!

I even shared a poem & images in- Guess This Place! 

(When my Blog's readers asked if there were any prizes for guessing the place, I realized that I am yet to have a Blog giveaway though now I have sponsored a Twitter contest for the first time! Time to be Curator of my Blog!)