Making the rounds

Woah two posts in one day? What the..? :)

Something I'm kind of chuffed about at work. I know you should never blog about work, you would not want to get Dooced or whatever, but I love my job, so no need to mock coworkers or rant and rave about the work :)

Last week the paper had a big redesign that we launched on the readers and while it was supposed to be a fairly smooth switch, my experience with big server moves, file moves and complete layout changes means there will be glitches and problems. It's inevitable. So I thought maybe it would be a good idea to hold a live chat with readers so they can ask their questions and tell us what they think of the new site.

I'd been looking for an opportunity to try out some liveblogging software I found on wiredjournalists.com called Cover it Live. It's touted as a great way to enhance a readers experience at events like political debates, sports or conferences. So I was thinking we could use it for some sports chat we already do, and then I immediately thought it would b cool to use on 24addict.com when the show is back. I could liveblog it with the folks who hang out there with me. Thought it would be fun. But it had been a while since I found the software and thinking to use it for the redesign didn't hit me until the day before the launch and I gt aproval, and got it mentioned in the paper just in time.

Well it was successful. And it had the added bonus of having the readers come in and actually tell us about errors they were finding or problems with navigation etc. The immediate feedback benefited both sides. I could fix a dead link and make a reader happy and the reader could tell me they felt it was too hard to find something, so the team could fix that and make the reader happy.

All in all, it turned out to be a pretty cool idea. And to my surprise, our use of CiL got a bit of buzz. I was interviewed by a reporter for journalism.co.uk, and that piece seems to have gotten picked up by another news media blog. Good publicity for us, and this whole thing is helping me find another niche area that I love working with: social media. I'm loving finding ways to use applications like Twitter and CiL for the paper, as well as working with the online team to recruit and run grandislandblogs.com. Things are changing for us so rapidly and I'm loving being able to help it out and being a part of it. Neat eh? :)