I enjoy pointing out skills, traits, knowledge sets or the like that I lack and want to develop and finding practical, fun, realistic ways to develop them as best I can — in small, attainable steps.
I love storytelling.
I want to be a better, more captivating, more experienced storyteller. I also bought a house back in December and was hunting a more original way to christen it.
With that in mind, a couple Saturdays ago, I introduced Story Shuffle to a dozen friends, mostly a cohort of former colleagues from my college newspaper days. It’s something of a themed, first-person storytelling event with lots of tasty food.
That niche vertical or hyperlocal news site that covers your community can be just as valuable as the big newspaper or local TV spot, I told an audience of nearly 20 as a panelist during an Entrepreneurship Week session hosted by the Empowerment Group last month.
The Kensington-based nonprofit who mission is “building a better Philadelphia by spurring economic growth,” hosted the week-long session of events — panels and lectures, workshops and happy hours — for small business owners and those interested in venturing down that path.
For the session on April 7, I joined a panel called ‘Build Your Own Buzz’ that was additionally manned by Alex Mulcahy, the founder of the popular, sustainability-focused GRID Magazine, Jim Sofran, an executive with Chicago-based Groupon and Deni Kasrel, a local marketing agent.
CoPress co-founders Greg Linch and Daniel Bachhuber at BarCamp NewsInnovation 2.0 at Temple University in Philadelphia on April 24, 2010. I spoke with them about Technically Philly and News Inkubator back in December.
I missed the release of the podcast once, and it took a conference four months later to remind me once more.
Back in December, my fellow Technically Philly co-founder Sean Blanda and I spoke to CoPress co-founders Greg Linch and Daniel Bachhuber about our site’s development and its work with News Inkubator, which was passed on in its Knight News Challenge attempt but conversations continue today.
In his role at Yoh, he contributes to the company’s blog, the Seamless Workforce. A few weeks ago, he asked if I wanted to grab dinner, chat a bit about the region’s technology scene and record some audio for their blog.
I sure seem to like talking, so I was happy to oblige. Below, I share the links to what managed to become a three-part series
LESSON: If you’re noticed, your work will be scrutinized.
4. Potential Partners — “I don’t see the point of meeting.”
FAILURE: Turned down an opportunity to meet with a key business leader.
LESSON: In this new media environment, everyone is a potential partner.
5. Investment (sappy anecdote) — “Well, that wasn’t THAT depressing.”
FAILURE: We started Technically Philly (and said some silly things in front of important people).
LESSON: We’ve learned much, met many people and improved what we know in the space of journalism.
The presentation is also available here. See and hear the presentation from Samurai Tours here.
When we were asked for more embarrassing stories, we realized we should have also shared the story of our speaking engagement with the Women’s Press Association of Pennsylvania, in which no one showed except the organizer and former Philadelphia mayoral candidate Queena Bass. Or we could have told one of the half dozen times Sean has been under dressed when going to cover events.
It was a fun session with a few practical takeaways, we hope. If nothing else, it seemed well-received.
Some Tweets
Anthony Ruiz of Samurai Virtual Tours quotes me about being stupid
So, I was excited to take some time away from my freelancing work once a week to work with the journalism club at Frankford High School. It was a short walk, and I could just fill in the time lost at night.
I was suddenly the professional journalist half of a Prime Movers program that formerly had me as the student journalist.
I made it a half dozen Thursday after-school meetings, enough to meet the core group of seven or so students and help them launch a WordPress blog for their content, but some rather large, fairly unexpected changes have happened.
So, now I’m reaching out to a host of colleagues to fill as many of the coming weeks with insightful professional journalists (if you’re in Philly and are interested, contact me). Still, though I’ve worked with high school journalism clubs before and only worked with the Pioneer Times of FHS for a couple months, I certainly learned a thing or too — in addition to, I hope, teaching some of those kids something.
On Dec. 30, 2009, I took the 15 minute walk from my home in Fishtown to the Penn Treaty Park complex near the Delaware River and into the station’s third floor studio, as another show closed before 7 p.m.
