This past weekend Eastern Ontario experienced its first serious ice storm of the year. Areas like Toronto received 30cm of ice, while Kingston received 15cm of ice. On Friday morning my husband woke up, looked outside, and said, “I bet I can skate on that.” [“That” being the road in front of our house.]
We both got dressed, and suited up to go outside – me in boots, him in skates. As he began skating around the road, I took my first Vine video (as you may have noticed with my finger in front of the lens). Once we returned inside, I posted it to Twitter.
Skating down the road in #ygk after some ice #onstorm https://t.co/A86MgNDO2K
— Jennifer Baker (@JenniferBakerCo) December 21, 2013
Then it got interesting… I got a tweet from Louise Martin, a producer and reporter at the CBC.
@JenniferBakerCo @weathernetwork Could CBC News use this video on the air? — Louise Martin (@LouiseMartinCBC) December 21, 2013
@JenniferBakerCo @derekochej @weathernetwork Super!!!!!!!!! Thanks so much. Be safe! — Louise Martin (@LouiseMartinCBC) December 21, 2013
The video of Derek skating outside our house was now being shown on a 30 minute loop on the CBC News channel.Later that evening I got a call from Wil, a reporter with the Canadian Press. He asked to interview myself as well as my husband. Within hours Will had posted an article that had been picked up by multiple news channels, including:
The impact of the 6 second Vine video was overwhelming. From Twitter the video received over 220 RTs and account mentions. From Vine 152 users shared it to Twitter, and 509 shared it to Facebook. On my Facebook account there were 19 shares, 17 comments, and 25 “Likes.”
It was certainly an interesting weekend! That said, I look forward to creating more Vine videos!