Apologies for not giving you any rants in a while, we’ve all been extraordinarily busy with NYD elections this past weekend, a big event planned for next week, and finals fast approaching.
But I wanted to take a moment to talk about the future of our website, and to get some more ideas from all of you on what we can do.
This blog started just about 2 1/2 years ago - and the man responsible for it, our chief, Ryan Renner, will be graduating soon. And just as it’s hard to imagine UNO Dems without Cody or Chad, it’s going to be the same for Mr. Renner. Ryan was President of UNO Dems when I arrived last year, and he is one of the major reasons why this organization is as strong as it is today. I don’t think this blog would exist without Ryan, and I don’t think we’d be quite so notorious without “chief,” either.
Since January, I’ve tried to fill chief’s shoes here - I don’t quite have his sense of humor, and I’m a little more pissed off at times - and I don’t know if anyone can ever quite do it, but I’ve tried my best. But as I frequently dominate the pages of this website, I remind myself that this isn’t my blog - it’s the UNO Democrats Blog, and it’s in that spirit that I want to reopen the discussion that I began in January.
What’s next for us?
A few ideas I’ve been kicking around… Please feel free to chime in with your own ideas, thoughts, whatever is on your mind. And if you think my ideas are stupid, don’t hesitate to tell me.
I want to invite more people to be a part of the blog team. Each and every one of you. If you’re a UNO Democrat, I want to hear from you. You don’t have to use your name - pseudonyms are always welcome. We can set you up with a posting account, or you can e-mail a submission to me or John, and we’d be happy to put it up for you.
I love this blog and its identity, so I hesitate to make the next couple of suggestions. A couple of them have been kicked around before, though, so I thought I would put them out there again:
- Coming up with a nickname for the blog.
- Moving away from Wordpress and towards a more community-based platform.
I don’t know whether either idea is feasible or desirable, but it’s something to consider.
Other ideas:
“Recommend” buttons (Facebook, Digg, del.icio.us, etc.) for each post.
Anything we can do to increase comments?
I think we need to remember that this is an Omaha-based blog with an emphasis on UNO’s Campus, Omaha, Nebraska, and our general region. While our quick updates on Nat’l affairs are good; the reporting that makes our site a ‘must-visit’ is the reporting and perspective that we can take but no one else can.
We should seek to engage the UNO Gateway, Omaha Reader, and OWH more often… perhaps putting one blogger in charge of reading each one and reporting on their reporting?
I think we have served to do good reporting on Lee Terry the same way Smith Watch now covers Rep. Smith in the 3rd… but we need to expand our operations in that regard.
And, for the sake of getting our blog more national links; more readership, and more respect when we break stories we need a new name (and yes, we do that sometimes… we were the first to report on a series of Dave Friend stories back in ‘05 and we often break exclusive content related to Democratic Candidates and office-holders).
I have been pushing the name “The Red Report” for quite a while… since our school color, the UNL school color, and our traditional blog color are all red. A different idea, one that I’ve kicked around with Kyle at NNN, is that we in someway combine our blogs in an even merger. If we were to do that, I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep the name New Nebraska Network… but I’m hesitant to give up the UNO Dems autonomy or identity or 2nd District Focus.
As for Wordpress / community blog: I think we should try to expand wordpress using WP-Plugins, rather than switching platforms. There are lots of good plugins out there. Right now we use some side-widgets but that’s about it.
Playing around with plug-ins is probably the better idea. I’m still very much a novice at the technical web stuff, I’d love to see what we can do with some different Wordpress plugins.
Here’s one that I think we should put in:
Post ratings - very simple, Ajax-based star ratings of posts. I think I remember you saying a while back we should have something like this.
I’m in favor of rebranding the blog - but certainly not at the expense of its identity as a UNO Democrats blog. I do think we should brainstorm some names.
“The Red Report” doesn’t quite work for me for a couple of reasons: mostly, that “red” almost always in our universe means “Republican,” which we are most certainly not. It works for UT mostly because “Burnt Orange” is unmistakably referring to Texas.
If there’s a way to work “Maverick” or “Mav” into the title, that might not be bad. I hesitate to suggest anything involving “Cornhusker” or “Husker” because a) it’s going to be mistaken for a football blog, and b) we don’t go to UNL.
Shining the light back on local issues is key - I feel I’ve kind of been slacking in that regard lately.
MavReport?
Nebraska State News? In tribute to our old campaign from back in the fall of 2005?
dave, I’m sure that you know I appreciate your work on this blog. I hear that new president of UNO Dems has a hard time saving things to her desktop and probably won’t contribute too much to the website.
For now, I don’t know if change is good. The dynamics or the group are greatly changing and the blog is a place where everyone feels at home.
One change would be to use more updated pictures. We are an attractive organization, hottest chapter of the year in my books. We should have pictures of the newer members so everyone can see their shining faces and to show that we appreciate how hard they work
last suggestion, is there a way to put spell check on here. I could really use it.
Definitely. I don’t want to change anything if it’s going to detract from the group as a whole. Just kind of thinking out loud here, mostly.
Good call on the pictures. I don’t think our gallery’s been updated in a while.
And spell check… if you’ve got Firefox 2.0, it’s built in to the browser.