I Tumblr for ya / Flavor Country

30 Sep

I went to Winston-Salem / Wake Forest University this week, which as near as I can tell specializes in tobacco legends and beautiful campuses with sexy trees. I will tell you about that in a bit.

First, let me fill you in on what I’ve been working on the last few weeks on these, our very best Internet delivery systems.

Last week, I did a Digital Savant column explaining how to get up and running on Tumblr. Tumblr, which I have sometimes derogatoraliciously compared to Livejournal, is actually a really great, simple blog platform and if you are already a Tumblr Pro, this will probably seem pretty elementary to you.

I started a Tumblr blog a while back when we were still doing Age of Lasers and a second one I set up with just my name lay fallow for a few years, Tumbled, if you will.

So I revived it and got back in there, tickling the Tumblr until I felt satisfied I could properly discuss it. Your own satisfaction may vary.

That same week, I did a Digital Savant Micro about WordPress, the software running this here very blog thing you are just now mind-melding with. Seems like those two things would go well together, like peanut butter and … a butter knife?

I wrote about Yellow Cab Austin’s new tech upgrades (which will be part of a future column on Austin transportation stuff) and tomorrow’s column is about how we Photoshop ourselves online. The Micro for this week is about Apple’s new Passbook app in iOS 6.

You may have noticed in there that statesman.com and austin360.com have been completely redesigned. It’s part of an entire content management system upgrade we’re doing that has been the subject of lots of training and discussion in the newsroom. It’s a lot to get used to, but we’re all trying to keep our heads up through so much change this year.

We also made the transition to have our pages laid out elsewhere and the lights went out officially on our copy desk. I would talk more about this, but honestly it would just make me incredibly sad and blubbery. I’ll just say that some of these people shifted into other jobs and that’s fantastic, and other people left and that sucks so hard that every one of us working there feels it, badly.

It happens every now and then that someone will ask me in an email to go somewhere to talk (or to ask questions so that other people can talk while I nod with understanding).

Often, these conversations end abruptly when I say I can’t do it because it takes work to go somewhere, even if the talking itself is not as much work as the going. Things usually break down over travel, which I try to avoid when it involves being away from home for more than one night, or money, which is frequently not offered at all.

Sometimes, I’ll get asked what it will take to get me to go somewhere and I’ll throw out some information and then never hear back, as if the information was trapped in a bottle thrown to sea.

But maybe once a year, all the details work out and I actually go somewhere.

This time, it was to North Carolina to moderate a forum on cyber-communication.

At one point, I wasn’t sure if this was to be a solo presentation or if I were going to moderate, but as the weeks got closer, I double checked to make sure I didn’t need to be spending many backbreaking hours in the PowerPoint salt mines (salt mines with a very bland border and text that slides in from the right) or that there was no A/V I needed to work out on my end.

This thing, it turns out, was more geared toward radio as it was a public radio station (and the generous Forsyth Education Foundation) brining me in. They were more concerned with getting decent audio than showing faces on a screen. So I did a pre-interview with the station (click here to hear me ramble about tech and kids for five minutes).

I coordinated with the other panelists over emails, putting together a list of questions and when I arrived, we went through everything again, resulting in what I thought was a really good panel covering a pretty broad set of topics, from cyberbullying to online defamation to what the future is for digital natives. You can hear and read some highlights from the panel here.

As for the trip itself — you guys! Have you been to North Carolina?! It’s totally beautiful and awesome! Everyone was super nice and the trees were all clumped together and endless and I ate shrimp and grits while two charming older people regaled me with tales of their college years and the place I stayed was a B&B in Old Salem, which is like hundreds of years old and… wow. For the fewer than 20 hours I was there, I just kept wishing I could stay longer to check out the bakeries and walk around and just experience it a little more because what I saw was great. I saw a statue of R.J. Reynolds! The Nabisco guy! (He’s not the Nabisco guy.)

I mean, check this out:

That thing pumps real water!

And this fire station probably predates actual fire!

My breakfast was a really great feast, which this photo only shows a fraction of. See that? That granola is homemade, yo!

The fun continued after the panel when my hosts took me out for drinks. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t drunk. I mean can you get drunk from two mint juleps? Oh, you can? If you’re a gigantic pussy?

Well, that’s me, I guess, because I went back to my room and started Tweeting strangely about how much I love the trees in Winston-Salem.

I also sent some @replies that probably sounded even worse to anyone who saw them out of context:

The next morning, I may have expressed some regret.

And… finally:

So all that happened.

And I got a pretty photo before I left.

I haven’t forgotten that I promised you a funny car story. That’s coming, I swear, very soon.

Something else is coming, not sure how soon, but it’s on the way. Here’s a little visual clue:

One Response to “I Tumblr for ya / Flavor Country”

  1. Carolyn Smith October 1, 2012 at 6:45 am #

    Tree kissing…funny.

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