4/20 Story Ideas

Final class project. Depending on the class, many times these three little words can cause students stomachs to cringe as the pulsating anticipation of meticulous work most likely required to acquire a good grade on such project ceases to rest.



Luckily for me, however, my final class project isn't looming over me like a scholastic death sentence waiting for me to break down from stress. Instead of the usual term paper, PowerPoint presentation or other by-the-book final project domain, Dr. Stevens has assigned for my class a final multimedia project in which multiple forms of different technology will be used to tell a story. But what's the story?



The story we will be covering will be focused around the unofficial national/international marijuana smoking day on April 20, also widely known as simply 4/20 to many. For this story, I have been assigned to brainstorm five creative and substantial story ideas that I think would tackle this commonly covered day. Below, I have listed the fruits of my mind-churning labor.



My five 4/20 Story Ideas



1. Traveling for 4/20- 4/20 attracts thousands of people to Boulder for the day from places ranging from other Colorado towns to cities across the country. It would be interesting to look into the travel portion of 4/20 by talking with taxi services, RTD bus drivers, shuttles to and from airports, etc. to determine trends in travel surrounding 4/20. We could interview specific bus drivers about the days leading up to, the day of and the days after 4/20 and how they differ from an average day. We could find travelers from different cities/states and create an interactive map of their hometowns, which when clicked upon provide a short blurb about the person and perhaps leads to a small video interview.



2. Boulder Eateries - Due to the influx of people in Boulder in addition to the so-called "munchies" caused by marijuana, we could approach 4/20 from a food angle including amount of food prepared, sold, left over, types of food that are most popular, restaurants selling food on Norlin quad that day or promoting their restaurants for later, special deals made for 4/20, etc. We could also feature 4/20 participators discussing their favorite choice of munchy for the day. This type of information could be presented possibly in various tables/charts with (if at all possible) sound recordings of interviews with Boulder restaurant employees that describe 4/20 food trends.

3. Norlin Quad Crowd Measurer - I am not sure if this idea is even possible or if it would be too complicated, but I think it would be fascinating to somehow create a progressive, interactive map of Norlin Quad that measures the amount of people on Norlin Quad at various times leading up to 4/20 as well as the locations of people. The map would use colors or symbols of some sort to measure where the people are and how many there are at any give time. We could have a series of maps that show the crowd size and volume at different time intervals before, during, and after the actual event. I think this would be a creative, more aesthetically appealing way to view crowd number information instead of simply stating it. Again, not sure if this would work, but if it did I think it has some pretty promising potential.

4. Class Attendance levels - Because 4/20 for a lot of people is seen as an entire day dedicated to consuming marijuana, many students decide to ditch classes for the day. As 4/20 falls on a Wednesday this year, classes will still be in session and students will be ditching them. For this possible story angle, we could take a survey of many class attendances for 4/20 and compare them to that week, month, or the entire the semester. We could compile all of the information together and take a grand average of attendance variances for the week and/or day of 4/20 and depict the information in an interactive/multimedia graphic. The graphic could possibly be of a classroom and the attendance average could be depicted to the number of filled seats. In addition, we could link video/audio interviews with professors and/or students about attendance on the day of 4/20.

5. Safety/Accident Info - A large crowd of people most times attracts accidents and because of the somewhat distorted state of the majority of this crowd, accidents may be bound to happen. Another angle we could approach is the accident/safety side of 4/20. We could gather information from hospitals as to how they go about preparing for the event, common accidents they see on 4/20 (if any), any out of the ordinary experiences they have had in the past, etc.