Netprov Blog Post

So I had quite an experience doing the Air-B-N-Me Netprov. When we were first introduced to the project I felt confused about the process and I was not sure exactly what we had to do. The fact that it was an experimental project, made me feel unease. However, I felt like I slowly got the hang of the overall concept once we extended our conversations about it in class. When it came time to actually start the Netprov I thought I understood what we had to do but once I started to go over all the Google documents shared, I got confused yet again. I think that this was naturally going to happen since this project was experimental and I had never heard of Netprovs before. Part of me was excited about doing something different and new but who likes to feel like they don’t really know what they are doing?

After reading all the Google documents a few times and meeting with my group, I finally understood completely what we had to do. I then decided to make my character one that wouldn’t be too far off from the real me so that I would actually be able to record the videos I needed to upload. When choosing between Periscope and YouTube, I immediately thought it would’ve been most appropriate to use YouTube because I knew I was not going to be able to broadcast at a specific time live due to my crazy busy schedule. Ones I decided what kind of character I was going to be creating and had decided that I was going to use YouTube to upload my videos I was really excited about the Netprov.

The most challenging part came after I had recorded my videos and had created my character’s profile on the Air-B-N-Me page. When I went ahead to create a YouTube account to upload my character’s videos, I created the account with my Kean e-mail but under my character’s name. I did this since I wanted the YouTube account to really match my character so that when Lurfers would swap lives with me they would actually land on my character’s YouTube channel instead of landing on a YouTube channel with my real name in it. I thought that by doing this it would give the Lurfers a more authentic experience.

I was excited to have created a YouTube channel for my character and felt accomplished once I uploaded all her videos. However, when I later logged into my Kean account, I was stunned to see that my name had changed to my character’s name on my Kean’s e-mail account. This happened because I created my character’s YouTube channel with my Kean e-mail and I guess that since YouTube is linked to Google and Kean to Google then everything linked and changed my name! When this happened I felt like I was having a true swappertunity with my character and while it was kind of funny at first, when I noticed that Kean would not allow me to change my name back to my real name under their setting, I quickly became annoyed and frustrated with that situation. I could not believe that had happened. How in the world could YouTube link to my e-mail and change my name! I thought. Well it did it and it was CRAZY!! I spent like an hour or more trying to figure out what had happened and I felt like I kept hitting walls when Kean would just not allow me to change my name back. I ended up having to take my character’s videos down, changing the YouTube channel to my real name so that Kean would change my name back – it finally did! Thank God… so frustrating! Then, I created an e-mail for my character using Outlook only to find out that you can ONLY use a Gmail account to log into YouTube – another frustration. So then I had to create an entire different Gmail e-mail for my character to get into YouTube then FINALLY be able to upload my character’s video. If I would’ve known all that was going to happen I would’ve just used my name on YouTube. But then again, I was really trying for things to match for my character. Throughout that whole experience I felt like I had a true swappertunity.


After I was able to straighten things out with my e-mail and my character’s YouTube channel, I uploaded all her videos again to her channel and was able to complete the Netprov. Other than that issue, I had a fun time doing the Netprov. I think it was nice to have experienced something new. It was fun and creative. I am also glad that I decided to use YouTube because although it was a frustration, after hearing my classmates’ Periscope stories, I think I would’ve been terrified to have used Periscope for my character.