As I live through what is one the most interesting and insanely busy times on my life (moving, starting a Masters Program, trying to start a viable business), I have spent a bit of time thinking about how this blog can be of more use to Kamloopsians and people interested in Kamloops. Here are 5 preliminary thoughts, I'd be interested in yours:
- Crowdsourcing the Content:
I would like to set up informal and formal mechanisms to allow many more people to input into what gets talked about here. - Explain more the why and how, and focus less on the who,what, where:
I don't remember where I read it, but I thought this was just so bang on. The tradional media does a great job of giving people the basic facts of a story. A complementary effort, and one which I think helps people be better citizens, is to explain why a story / issue is important and also to explain how something happens / happened. And to do these in an easily understandable fashion. A tall order, but a noble one in my view. - Celebrate Kamloops with some depth:
I would like to focus on positive aspects of our community. I don't want the positive stuff to be "rah rah" press release style content but to be substantive highlighting of things that are going very right in Kamloops - there is a lot! - Be More Personal Again:
After not getting re-elected to City Council, I took my picture of the sidebar of the site and have struggled with how much of my own interests I should inject into the articles I write here. After attending Blogworld Expo, and hearing again and again about the importantance of the "personality of the blogger", I think you will see my mug and my editorial influence around here a lot more. (Note: this may sometimes come into conflict with point 1, but I am happy to "hold the tension" between the two points) - A "member", "supporter", "subscriber" community:
I have resisted calling my efforts here "citizen journalism", but that's actually a pretty accurate description of what I would like to be. I am incredibly interested in how media influences our lives, and I would like to offer something of real added value. This will take support, (including but not exclusively) financial support. I did offer something like this early this year, and I thank profusely the handful of people who became official subscribers. The subscribe buttons are still at the bottom of the sidebar, but I don't push the offer at all. I need to work harder to figure out compelling value, and renew my offering. Coming soon to a local Kamloops issues blog near you!
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