What it is

Revamp is a niche vertical aimed at the homebuilding, renovation and repair industry.

For details, check out this post that explains our thinking about local businesses and social media in better detail.

Watch for more to come on this. We’ve just turned advertisers loose with the product. I’m expecting it to continue to be an interesting project.

What it is:

I use my blog to break news and find new sources for stories for my work as city hall and business reporter for the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

My primary goal is to use the medium to foster a conversation around the news and add value beyond typical coverage of issues and individual stories.

Liveblogs are a tool I’ve been using recently to stress the interactivity of the medium.

Examples:

* In May 2008, during the presidential campaign, I was offered the chance to interview Barack Obama one-on-one during a campaign stop.

I used the blog to ask readers what they’d ask the candidate, compiled their responses, and culled the best three questions to put forward. Afterward, I posted a transcript and audio of the interview.

* In the fall of 2008, Corvallis was contemplating charging a license fee for businesses in order to pay for economic development programs. These programs were called for in a plan for attracting targeted industries known as “prosperity that fits,” a name that implies this city’s deep distrust of outside corporate interests.

At any rate, local business really came together against the fee, so I asked readers if it meant the whole plan was doomed.

This sparked discussion by citizens, business owners, committee members and a City Councilor. Eventually, even some people inside the license fee committee suggested new options, including scrapping the fee altogether.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Recommendations:

Noted by beatblogging.org for using the blog to expand government coverage, live blogging and being innovative with the blog.

What it is:

The Morning Minute was planned as a way to present daily video on the Gazette-Times Web site for a few hours in the morning and present stories to viewers that we had or were working on that day.

Examples:

* I was shooting the video one morning when I heard that Oregon State University students were lined up around the block trying to get tickets to the OSU-USC game. I grabbed the camera and headed out to get some live pictures and came across some people who’d camped out overnight.

* Maybe I was missing the thrill of going to the polls on election day (voting in Oregon is all done by mail), so I went out to ballot dropboxes to shoot the minute. Voters coming by seemingly right on cue worked out pretty well.

What it is:

Green City was an attempt to capitalize on strong community support in Corvallis for a citywide plan to promote sustainability.

Hundreds of people showed up to town hall meetings where they formed into action groups and started throwing out ideas for how to make the city a greener place.

The site went really well for a while, but I’d always envisioned it becoming more of a forum and a discussion place led by citizens and guest bloggers. For a few reasons (technology being a prime block) it never got off the ground.

I talked with Pat Thornton at Beatblogging.org about that, too.

Plans are in the works to revamp the idea of a community built around green living. The energy is still in the community. Stay tuned.

What it is:

OregonFlyfishers is a social network for flyfishers in Oregon. The site is designed to offer people a place to share information, post photos of their trips and talk about gear, share ideas, whatever.

Everyone who registers create a public profile, become friends with one another and can have a blog on the oregonflyfishers domain.

The site was built with WordPress MU and the BuddyPress suite of plugins. It’s been a big experiment for me to better understand blog management and fiddle with php (trial and error mostly, but it’s getting the job done).

We’re not quite live yet, so interaction has been slight. The plan is to go for it soon.