Click here to view the embedded video.

And here is Sheila’s response:

This is going to sound made up, fabricated, a complete lie…but bear with me.

I work with some amazing professionals at the Union-Bulletin newspaper, many of whom are younger than me — smarter, cooler, hipper…you name it and I come in about last on several lists.

Really, it’s like a Twilight Zone episode where I’m in junior high forever and still not part of the “in” crowd.

And now I’ve been called out for a challenge by one of the cool kids.

It’s Jeremy Gonzalez, the guy with spiky hair, a model’s wardrobe and a completely hip vocabulary. He produces videos for the Union-Bulletin with a cool, techno kind of flair.

Not only is Jeremy the same age as my son WITH THE SAME NAME, his mother is my age WITH THE SAME NAME.

I mean, given all that, how could I possibly be anything but, um, me? So not hip, in other words.

Nonetheless, somehow (you can look into a mirror for the next part) my blog has done a little better than Jeremy’s blog and he’s not so happy about that, it seems.

He has proposed a virtual duel he is calling “Every Day in May.” The idea is we will both post something every single day for the month and see who comes out the winner. Jeremy thinks it might be a case of quantity versus quality.

I warned the little pipsqueak that posting so often might irritate readers, but he is too cool to think I could possibly be right. Besides he has the groovy tools, like making snappy videos and doing graphic things on his Web page I can’t even think about.

I feel really good when I can get a simple digital picture on my blog, for goodness sake.

Jeremy posted his challenge today, May Day, and lunch is on the loser.

So, like I’ve done before, I’m asking for help in getting the word out and in beating THE SHORT PANTS OFF THIS LITTLE BRAT, whom I think of as a second son on the days we’re not competing.

You know what needs to be done in this war of youth versus not-that-cool. Send me things to blog about, send the posts far and wide, and send a message: sometimes the un-cool kids get to win.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On the geeky side, this is the first Drupal site that I built. Yeah, I know there’s not a whole to it but it still felt like an accomplishment to learn a new CMS system. It’s the first of many more Drupal sites that we are hoping to launch. Including a local economy wiki as part of our upcoming economy series.

From the Barcamp wiki:

BarCamp NewsInnovation Portland is one of the regional editions of BarCamp NewsInnovation.

The idea is bring together 25 or more energetic, tech-savvy, open-minded individuals who embrace the chaos in the media industry because the ability to do really cool things still exist.

Our goal is to identify what some of those really cool things are, and then figure out how to do them.

Everyone may participate, especially people outside of the news industry who love to consume news and information and are great thinkers and innovators. We’re looking for: journalism students, web developers, freelance journalists, local beat reporters, technologists, editors, entrepreneurs, journalism professors, and news consumers with ideas for the future of news.

For those of you unfamiliar with Barcamp, it is a series of unconferences where the participants lead the discussions/workshops and where demos are encouraged. In other word, “lets get beyond just talking about it and start developing something while we are all here.”

NewsInnovation Barcamp was created by Jason Kristufek. Here is a little video interview between David Cohn and Jason.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some of the topics we’ll be discussing:

• What would a local news startup look like? Are there examples in the Portland area?
• What is journalism in 10 years? How does journalism evolve with technology?
• What are some non-common formats for journalism to take?
• Daniel – what are the core competencies of a news organization online?  re: a 10000words post about sections rendered obsolete by the weband “Why not writing a story is innovation“
• Daniel – Opening up to the community: the advantages of being transparent and iterative in the reporting process; why you might want to create a cafe out of the newsroom…
• How do we pay for good journalism online? Business models: anyone using one that works?
• Independent journalists: Is freelancing our future?
• How do we maintain integrity while moving to an all-digital future?
• Discuss CoPress and the merits/demerits of collaboration on technology?
• ORBlogs?

We’ll be livestreaming the conference and I’ll be shooting some behind the scenes video and interviews to share with our newsroom and all of you in the community.

If any of you will be in Portland on Saturday and would like to take part in the conference register here. There are few passes left. You’ll be able to help brainstorm ideas about the future of journalism and news organizations. And it’s free. If you can’t make it to Portland check back here during the week to get more information about the livestreaming video of the event.

If you have any questions or ideas that you think would be worthwhile for us to discuss at the conference please post them in the comment section below. And don’t forget you can leave a video comment if you like.

On Friday we got a sneak peak at what the new system will allow us to do. We’ll be able to deliver our content in variety of ways. As I’ve mentioned before, the actual posting of stories will much more streamlined. But what really excites me most is the ability to tag stories with a variety of data – keywords, categories, geo-data. This will allow us to offer our content in new, more contextual ways.

Are you a College Place resident who only wants to read College Place news? Well just click on the College Place News link/category. Want to only read about sports in College Place? Click on the College Place sports sub-category. Or want to read about a certain topic? Maybe you are interested in finding out more about the recent restaurant closure so why don’t you click on the restaurant closures topic link and see all the stories.

There are many other ways to use this to deliver the stories you want with other related content such as videos, maps, photos, and links. Some really cool and useful stuff to look forward to. I’ll update everyone once we get a better idea when we’ll be able to go live with the new system and redesign site.

Let me know what you think of these future-features and any other features you would like to see on our site.

It is well known President Obama built much of his campaign using social media tools including Twitter and YouTube. Now that he is in office his staff has redesigned the official White House website which includes includes a blog. Whatever your political inclinations may be you must admit that it is a vast improvement over the previous administrations version:

The redesigned White House website.

Website during Bush Administration. This image was captured from internet archives.

The new administration has vowed to be transparent and more open with records requests. The President will continue to post videos to YouTube and use Twitter to post updates. There’s even been talk about him switching from a Blackberry to an iPhone. It’ll be interesting to see what other new media tools they’ll be utilizing. Maybe a press conference streamed live via Mogulus that will allow viewers to post questions?

I sat at the top of the the bleachers with a camera on a tripod connected to my laptop. Ideally we would use two cameras. And hopefully we’ll do that before the season is over (it looks like the boys have 4 more home games and the girls have one more.) We only got a few viewers and I actually got the opportunity to live-chat with one of them. According to the viewer the quality was decent – better than some others he has viewed. Now we don’t expect our livestreams to rival television quality but we want to offer the community a decent alternative to being at the gym. It also allows people to offer their opinion about the game while it is being played.

Our next attempt is tomorrow night as the Wa-Hi boys play Eastmont. Hope you Wa-Hi Blue Devil fans out there will tune in at 7:30 p.m.  Join the chat, let me know how the video stream is working and while you are there, complain about how the officials missed the foul call. You’ll find the video stream here.

And hopefully we’ll get a chance to get video of the amazing last minute shot from half court that wins the game.

The first profile is of Catie McIntyre Walker. Catie can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/Catie:

I was born and raised in Walla Walla, WA. I am a graduate of the Institute for Enology and Viticulture. After almost eight years of cleaning spit buckets and pouring wine for the masses, I hung up my corkscrew to open my online wine store, Walla Walla Wine Woman and to pursue my writing. At this time I have a column, “The Grape Vine” in Walla Walla Union Bulletin’s Lifestyles Magazine. I am also a wine blogger and started the first and original Walla Walla Wine Blog back in 2005.

When did you start tweeting?

2007

How were you introduced to Twitter?

I was introduced by other wine-bloggers.

How often do you tweet?

It depends on my time. There are more relaxing days when I may twitter about 20 messages and other days where I cannot get to Twitter for several days.

What do you use Twitter for?

To keep in touch with my wine peers from all around the world. Also it is a good source of material for me about the wine world as many of my friends will post urls regarding sources of wine info. I also have two Twitter ID’s. One is more casual and the other I use more for business.

And believe it or not – - I have used the business Twitter ID to make wine sales – and surprised at the positive responses (of course, sales) I have received. However, I am cautious when to use it and use it sparingly, as not to appear as spam and out of respect to my wine friends.

How do you tweet? Via web? Desktop application? Mobile?

I tweet via the web.

What advice would you give to someone just starting to use Twitter?

For personal uses, just have fun with it. For business: it is definitetly a great tool for networking and I would recommend finding a way to incorporate it into your business.

If you want to know a little more about Catie check out her blog.

But for those of you unable to be in the stands you will have the opportunity to follow the game online. We will be broadcasting live online from the Blue Devil gym. We will have two video cameras there to provide a coupe of views of the game. Now it will not be broadcast quality – not something you would see on ESPN. And there won’t be any commentators or play-by-play but you will be able to follow the game and hopefully catch some of the highlights as they happen. The video quality itself will also not be TV quality, as the technology is not quite there yet but it should be a decent alternative to being there.

We will be using a live-streaming website called Mogulus that will allow us to connect two cameras and allow us to switch back and forth from the different angles. You will also be able to participate in a chat room while you watch the game. The game will also be recorded and archived so you can watch it on a later date.

This is our first try at doing something like this so we don’t promise that it will be glitch-free. But it will be worth a peek tonight if you are a Blue Devil fan but won’t be able to make it out to the game. As always we welcome your feedback. 

Tune in here:

www.union-bulletin.com/livesportsbroadcast/

UPDATE - 

Due to technical difficulties, namely that we weren’t able to connect to the Wa-Hi wireless network, we were unable to broadcast live from the Wa-Hi basketball game. The final score was:

Eisenhower 66, Wa-Hi 60

See my video comment below.

click on image to enlarge

We’ve been incorporating Twitter more with our local news coverage. We are posting story updates,breaking news, advisories and in general using it to communicate with the public. During the recent snowstorm we even posted Twitter updates generated by local folks.

 I’ve posted here in the past about Twitter. It’s a “micro-blogging” platform. Which means you publish 140-character-long posts.

Although Twitter saw significant growth in 2008 with numerous media companies including newspapers using the service it is still not a “mainstream” product like Facebook or MySpace. The Twitter community in the Walla Walla Valley has grown significantly since I first started searching for local Twitterers. One of my hopes for 2009 is to expand the local Twitter community (and online community in general.) To do this I will post a series of tutorials for those people in the community that aren’t as technically versed as some other people. This first one is to walk you through a Twitter account set-up. Instead of re-inventing the wheel I will be using a great and easy Twitter “how-to” produced by Stephanie Romanski who is the web editor at The Grand Island Independent.

1. Go to http://www.twitter.com and click on the green ‘Get Started – Join!’ button.

2. On the signup form, pick a username. Try to keep it fairly short.

3. Choose a password. Something you will remember.

4. Enter your email address (Twitter never spams, never sells your address)

5. Type in the code words in the ‘Captcha’ box (this is a measure that prevents spammers from creating fake twitter accounts.)

6. Click ‘I accept. Create my Account.’ – You’re all done!

Twitter may ask if you want to email invites to people, but you can skip that step.

Once you’re set up, you can play around with your settings, change the design of your Twitter profile page, add a short bio and upload an image that represents you. But if you want to start tweeting right away, all you need to do is type your tweet in the box that asks “What are you doing?”

It’s that easy. Now there are ways to dig deeper into the Twitter platform by using it as a way to publish updates directly from your blog, to send and receive updates via text message, to post photos/video/polls, etc. But this will get you started. Be forewarned, you will end up refreshing your Twitter home page often to see what your network is up to. It can become addictive.

And remember, as I’ve mentioned before, it is all about the network. Twitter and all the other web services like Facebook become a wonderful tool if you build a strong network of like-minded, interesting people. Or not. There’s nothing wrong with using Twitter to tell your friends that your are at Colvile St. Patisserie sipping a latte.

If any of you out there are already using Twitter let us know how you use it. Post a comment below or better yet post a video comment using Seesmic. It’s that little raccoon thing below the comment box.