Thanksgiving Weekend

Besides eating until I nearly burst, I went fishing over the the Thanksgiving holiday. The White River - my favorite spot on the planet. It was still deer season in Arkansas, and there was only one camp at the landing - a deer hunting party. The rest of the river was mine.

It was cold, maybe 40 degrees, and a bit windy but the fish were biting well. The river was very low and the water clear as gin. I caught a limit in less than forty minutes and played catch and release after that.

The rest of the weekend was business. I worked on a website design for my client in the UK and then there was the business of putting up Christmas lights, which I accomplished between rain showers.

The Woods

I was out in the woods over the weekend. Deer season. Arrived before first light. I climbed into my tree, had a cup of coffee and stared up at the stars, listened to coyotes howl about half a mile away and deer move cautiously on dry leaves.

As the stars melted into morning, Venus was the last to give up her light. And soon, the blackness turned to gray then to full color as the sun rose higher in the sky.

Two does, startled by something I could not see, passed directly in front of my stand. Running, ducking under branches, escaping. I let them pass. A fawn was following, confused, and got separated from the two. Hopefully, they found each other again.

That was the end of my deer sightings in the woods that day. The weather was too warm, too windy for deer to move well. But it didn't matter. For seven hours, maybe eight, I was at one with the woods, with nature, with the great outdoors, and nothing else mattered. The real meaning of deer season.

Panel Discussion at MSU

Last month, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion sponsored by Missouri State University's Journalism Department. The panel met yesterday and discussed ethics in citizen journalism. It was a great experience and I felt privileged to be a part of the group which included Brian Lewis, a columnist for the News-Leader, and Doug McGill of the McGill Report and formerly of Bloomberg and the New York Times organizations.

What most thrilled me was how readily the professional journalists on the panel including the moderator, Dr. Andy Cline, embraced the citizen journalist movement. On the surface it seems journalism practiced by untrained people could be threatening to career professionals, but these folks saw it very differently. Rather than be concerned with how the trend affects individual journalists, they viewed citizen journalism as an enhancement to the process of reporting the news. They explained that there are many experts out there who need to be sharing their expertise with others and that this new way of reporting would only make the flow of information faster, better and with more detail than could be done before.

It was the process and the result of news reporting that most impressed this group. They see journalism as an extension of democracy and citizen journalism as a better means of making democracy work. Very refreshing to see professionals advance their cause instead of defending their territory.

freshare Site Version 3.0

I had the best of intentions. Really, I did. My plan was to design a complete makeover for freshare.net. And I did that part. I was lax in pursuing the other part of my plan. I wanted to blog my design process and talk about some of the pitfalls encountered and successes achieved along the way. But I got too busy designing and constructing with a fast approaching deadline. There was little time to write.

So here is the condensed version of how it all went:

I needed a more navigable site with a front page that would give visitors a sampling from each major category we had to offer. I wanted to move away from a detailed menu that told what was available and instead display the samples that would show visitors what stories were inside. And it needed to be clean, no ads on the front page.

My html and css skills are improving, but I am still pretty slow at the process. Since I have to run the publishing business and write content for freshare, most of my site building needed to be done before or after work each weekday, or on the weekends - time I usually spend writing stories for my blogs and in my journal.

The content management software I used for the upgrade was the same one I started with: Expression Engine. It is powerful, top-notch, php-based software that accomplishes everything I need it to and has more features I have yet to use. It is a low cost alternative with one drawback: there is no direct customer support, which is OK if you don't mind investing your own time into figuring out how to use EE to build your site around.

If you enjoy programming and coding, the trade off is well worth the effort. Besides, there is unlimited, 24/7 access to the Expression Engine Forums where hundreds of helpful people can guide you through the rough spots.

All in all, it is the way to go. I paid under $400 for my license,and I get to upgrade every time a new version comes out for a small fee of $19 a year. Compare that to other options that cost in the five-figure range and I think I did the right thing.

The results were great and I was able to accomplish all the goals I had for the site upgrade. We add the content, but how and where it is displayed is dynamically generated by the Expression Engine cms.

Although the most difficult part of the re-design is behind me, we will be adding new features soon, like a freshare store, podcasts and video. All supported very well by the cms.

Take a look at the (almost) final results at: freshare.net.