Today is the last day of The Experiment.

But what was the BT Experiment??

In short, John Fitzsimons has spent the last 26 days in one room/cell in the Great Northern Mall in Belfast with only Internet, TV and a phone line. The aim was to create an impact, to “try to influence world events.” Did he succeed?

John is a 22 year old Film Studies studient from Newry, Northern Ireland, quite versed in the online world, with a YouTube channel [can't remember/find the url] where he specialises in voice overs and impressions, since beginning the project devised by local advertising company AV Browne he has had no contact with the outside world other than through the technology which is at his disposal and besides looking forward to seeing (well he could ’see’ so I guess more ‘touching’) his girlfriend he is also looking forward to “fresh air, and the smell of cut grass, and the ability to walk futher than 25 feet in a straight line!”

Those are definitely fair requests. After a series of mental arithmetic tests and a few interviews to be sure he was up for the task, John entered and began his quest. Though how well did he use the technology and time to achieve an impact?

A number of social networks were utilized: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Bebo, a Blog, as well as the BT Experiment website as a hub for all of these networks.

I asked John what he had hoped to gain from the experience:

“I wanted to achieve electronic connection with people in the thousands, and organize events in the real world, purely from my interaction with the public over the internet.

What he did achieve however:

“I arranged a conga line, a male leg wax session (were i and four other men took part) and a band to play outside the box. Also I have achieved over 7000 YouTube views and 2000 YouTube channel visits, over 460 twitter followers and over 1000 facebook group members. I also have had an interview with Peter dickson (the e4 voice over guy).

I have been on Ireland’s biggest radio station … rte 2fm, on the gerry ryan show. I have been on cool fm on several occasions, and on i102-104 which covers 10 counties of the west coast, and on u105 here in belfast. I have had articles in many news papers all over Ireland, and also have had reports that my story has hit newspapers in Boston, New york and Sydney.”

The “experiment” is a nice idea, and certainly some decent promotion for BT but I’m not entirely convinced that it achieved half of what was possible. John genuinely seems like a really nice guy, and it could just be me, but I wouldn’t have watched 19+ James Bond movies in the time given, but rather tried to find ways to bring far more people together than he did. A bit of radio, newspaper and online coverage is not causing an impact, besides the fact that those interviews where not carried out for any thing that John did since being in the room, rather just because he was in the room.

7000 views on YouTube is decent, though only an average of 179 views over 39 videos. As he said himself, “Facebook has the biggest potential at reaching real people” this I agree with, and 1000 real people to have joined his group is quite good. Though John loves the camera, for him it’s YouTube all the way, so I guess we can expect to see more of that pretty face.

Not to be too hard on “The Experiment” and John – I can only imagine it would be pretty tough being in the same room for a month boredom did appear to be a problem, but overcome, and then there was the problem of eating, thankfully there are many ways of getting food delivered, plenty don’t even require the use of a phone, but rather a nifty website, namely niftynosh.com where much of John’s food was ordered from and brought to the back of the store where he could collect it. However, I just can’t help by feel he could have potentially made a difference in some way.

Then again, he only set out to make an impact – and here we have it, I’ve been intrigued, and so have plenty of others, enough to blog about it, take some photographs of him, have a chat with him through the door of the Room and would actually like to invite him for a pint sometime when he is released.

Finding communities on the web, places where one person can make an impact and cause a stir can be difficult; John did do it. Next time the world.

John escapes his cell tomorrow at 9am and will be around the Great Northern Mall until around 1pm.

Tagged belfast social networking | 1 Comment