It is interesting who jumps on board with the latest gadget and who remains skeptical. Some staffers that you would never expect to be on board couldn’t be happier, while others who seemingly pride themselves on how hard they work want nothing to do with it. Hopefully, they will all find some use for it, be it for video, as a scanner, or even if it is just as a mobile hotspot.

Granted, this all sounds silly and somewhat vain. I mean, who can’t take some criticism? But I am talking about more serious issues. Back in 2006, after I came back from a trip to Nepal, a thread was started on the Lightstalkers forums that insinuated that a friend and I were abusing children during our stay in the country. Worse yet, some people on the forum were willing to believe these posts. It was not until my friend responded to these allegations with detailed accounts of our travels in Nepal, as well as links to our ongoing struggles with the person we believed responsible for the thread, that it was put to rest. Around the same time, a few blogs popped up featuring my image that spoke highly of the same person who created the false forum posts.

The problem is that with the anonymity that the Web provides, it is easy for one man to pose as many, creating false profiles and then providing those profiles with affirmation through comments and replies from other false profiles.

Four years, one fake Facebook page and a few fake blogs later, and I stumble across this gem:

Finding an old post about my time in Nepal as well as a profile picture and my Chips Quinn photo was easy enough, but why would he create the page using a post in which I did not speak highly of his Nepali program? He also changed any reference to my friend Rene and calls her my girlfriend.

To discredit me of course! Who is going to believe the word of a man who is now shooting adult movies and documentaries with my now (fake) girlfriend Rene Edde (the link goes to a porn site)? I literally laughed at loud at this point.

And of course, the icing on the cake, the post label:

Label: My girlfriend Rene Edde. Because who doesn’t categorize their posts based on their fake girlfriends?

As a child, I never really thought much of the crafts my grandmother would make. A frog out of a few rocks, a face out of dried leaves and acorns or an umbrella out of cigarette packages … It wasn’t until I saw an exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum showcasing crafts made in internment camps that I realized where she had learned to make these things and why she used the materials that she did and it definitely gave me a greater appreciation for that art and the subsequent art forms that she practiced once out of camp.

A similar exhibit is currently at the Smithsonian American Art Museum until January 30, 2011.

This may have been the reality for many of last week’s participants (working in dedicated, albeit small, web/online teams) but it is not mine, and I doubt it is the reality for other Web editors in many small market, rural areas. So what do I do on a typical day at work?

From 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. my day usually involves pagination and copy editing.

Copy editing: The aspect of my work most foreign to me, I will typically read through all of the days stories at some point in the day for content and/or for grammar/spelling.

Pagination: This usually involves paginating two local pages and, at times, two or three wire pages.

After 1 p.m. (we are an afternoon paper) my days usually involves a mix of posting content to the Web, blogging/social media management, training, podcasts, a mix of either shooting stills, creating audio slideshows or video, and the ever-present meeting.

Posting to Web: Fairly straightforward and not much different than any other CMS I’ve used it in the past whether it be College Publisher, WordPress or SaxoTech. The new AP Marketplace does add a slight hiccup to my workflow and, on the off chance that some other Web editor reads this, if you know of a way to publish select content to Marketplace without auto publishing everything, but also without having to enter each field manually, I would love to hear it.

Blogging/Social Media Management: Upkeep of the Telegram’s photo blog (soon to be multimedia blog as soon as I finish this post). Keeping content fresh and interacting with users on Twitter, Facebook and our SWKTalk forums.

Training: Weekly new media training for reporters and photographers. I also maintain www.danielsato.com/gctelegram, where I recap our training sessions and provide links to other tutorials and examples.

Podcasts: I have even gotten in to the podcast world, hosting “Talk of the Town,” where I discuss some topic that is pertinent either to Garden City or southwest Kansas each Wednesday afternoon at our local coffee house.

Stephanie Cole, of the Kansas Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, discusses the organization’s view on the 895-megawatt coal-fired power plant that is proposed to be built in Holcomb.

Dave Sjeklocha, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the Haskell County Animal Hospital, discusses the use of antibiotics in feed animals.

USD 457 Board of Education president Mike Utz and board member Gloria Hopkins discuss the recent decision to join Schools for Fair Funding, which is considering the idea of suing the state for funding promised to schools. Schools for Fair Funding has since decided to proceed in its lawsuit with the state.

Photos, slideshows and video: Every now and again, I also get to go and play outside of the office.

The potential upside the amount and variety of work I do: I have experience in 9 of the top ten areas of expertise sought after by online media, and 17 of the 23 skills listed. Mark Shaver, who maintains the blog Depth Reporting, mentioned that his areas of expertise, computer programming and database management, were well down on the list, though I imagine they have gone up in demand since Serena Carpenter’s 2008 study, which the rankings originated from.

(day 1) The first photo of the project:

(day 4) My brother on his wedding day:

(day 18) Going hunting with some war veterans:

(day 25) DIY photo studio:

In a system more interested in punishing than in actually addressing the problems of poverty, addiction, and physical and mental illness, close to 70% of those released in California will go back to prison within a year of their release…At A New Way of Life we boast the opposite statistics–more than 70% of the women who come to stay in our sober living homes and participate in our programming are successful in breaking the cycle—staying out of prison, and getting their lives back on track.

I have been working on a web site for them (hopefully to be completed soon) and have also been able to photograph one of their community events as well as photograph a series of portraits for them, a handful of which can be seen below.

For my purposes, I decided to used Flickr to create and manage my family’s photo archive. Now, as you know, one downside of Flickr is that users are only allowed to display the 200 most recent images/videos if they have a free account (which I do).

However, I was able to get around this, and actually make my archive much, much more functional, by creating a Flickr group as well. As you can see, the group currently has 400+ images in its pool, well over the 200 image limit of a free account.

Another major plus to using a Flickr group for your photo archive is the About/Group Description area. This area lets you write a description of your group with the option to include some html. It is the html that makes this so useful, as I can include links to tags for dates, locations, people, etc. Sure you could just search for tags with the search bar at the top, but that assumes you know which tags are in use. It also assumes that you know how to use the search bar (and will search for photos/tags within the group and not, say, in all of Flickr or in your own photostream) which is not a given when you are trying to share the archive with some less computer savvy relatives.

Lastly, you can’t tell, but I did not change the names of my images. They have been set to be numbered sequentially as they are scanned in. I then write the range of numbers on the envelop of the physical once they photos have been scanned and placed back in the envelop for storage. That way, if ever someone wants a print of a particular image, or for some reason needs a high-resolution scan, I can simply view the image number and find the proper envelop (they are being stored sequentially as I finish each one) to access the correct photograph.

Each year that I go back I run into someone from my past. A former math teacher, basketball coach, teammate … the festival is my real-life Facebook when reconnecting with the JA community.

It was with great pleasure, then, that I was able to volunteer my time and help document this past festival, held on Saturday, June 20 – Sunday June 21. The photos will eventually be incorporated into a DVD that will be used in fundraising efforts for the expansion of the community center.