Hasta La Ideas

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of John F Kennedy’s inaugural address (which is today), the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston has launched a website, created by The Martin Agency, that encourages visitors to revisit the speech and recite it with JFK…

When you visit ourfjkspeech.org, the sound of JFK delivering his inauguration speech plays, while the words appear on the screen, broken into segments appearing in rectangular blocks which scroll up the screen, the relevant one highlighted in the middle at any given time . It is these segments of the speech that visitors are encouraged to claim as their own by either posting them via Twitter or Facebook or by recording a video of themselves delivering that segment of speech via their webcam. The overall effect is that of a live stream of people posting up the speech.

Visitors can also opt just to watch the video submissions, rather than all the textual ones, or just the historical video of JFK giving the speech. There is also a Gallery section full of photographs of JFK’s big day, including a shot of a draft of the speech in barely legible handwriting, and some detailed shots of the outfit Jackie Kennedy wore that day 50 years ago.

To see the site in action, and potentially participate visit ourjfkspeech.org.