Tonight the mayoral candidates will be in another candidate forum focused on arts and culture at the San Antonio Central Library at 7 p.m. The forum is sponsored by the Westside Arts Coalition and will be a moderated discussion with questions submitted in advance. Since it’s at the Public Library WiFi access should be available so I will try to live blog from the event. It is presented as a public service for “the arts and arts organizations who are working to ensure Imagination, Creativity, and Authenticity remain central to San Antonio’s charm. Live blogging now from the forum. More info after the jump. Read more…
Facebook recently changed their platform to more resemble the Twitter style approach to news feeds. It’s commonly called microblogging and seems to be gathering traction in the social media space. Some view it as the future. I see it as just another tool in the social media toolbox. Use it where it makes the most sense. So when do you use blogging and when do you microblog? Read more…
We’re less than a month away from the beginning of early voting for the 2009 city council election and things are heating up. This week several candidate forums will be hosted across the city, two of them for the mayoral candidates being broadcast live. The Castro campaign will also be hosting their second virtual town hall this coming Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. The Express-News and San Antonio Business Journal continue to publish their candidate profiles on Sunday, the online versions being peppered with strong and contentious comments from all the campaigns. Yes, we’re coming into the home stretch of 2009 city council election. Read more…
Today Fiesta Centralized Ticket Sales starts selling tickets to various Fiesta events at 10 a.m. Normally this would be just another opening event for Fiesta. What has always made this opening different is that this location and the box office will be the only places you can purchase Cornyation tickets until 11 a.m. when you buy them over the Internet. So people will line up at both locations well ahead of the opening to secure those prized seats to the Thursday late performance. At the Fiesta Commission offices the first people got in line at 9:15 a.m. on Wednesday morning and have been there since. But hey, it Fiesta! Read more…
Today Pres. Obama will be hosting a virtual town hall today at 10:30 a.m. CST, taking questions from people who sign in and submit them through an online forum. People can also vote up or down on the questions. As of the time of this posting almost 70,000 people had submitted or voted on over 75,000 questions, far more than he could ever hope to answer. A moderator will select from questions submitted on topics ranging from home ownership to retirement security. It demonstrates that Pres. Obama is carrying forward his promise of a more accessible White House through social media technology. So the real question is if this something we can see more of in government? Read more…
I recently returned from attending the 1st/2nd Round of the NCAA tournament in Kansas City. The games were great and I had a great time in Kansas City. This was the inaugural NCAA event in the newly built Sprint Center in the downtown across from the Power & Light District, an entertainment center designed for year-round events. The event was a great success for Kansas City and helped showcase both the hospitality and entertainment aspects of the city. Expect the city to see more NCAA tournament games in the future, something every city likes to have. But what about San Antonio? Personally I think we have a great opportunity ourself based on comments from KU fans I met during the weekend. Read more…
I just got back from Kansas City after watching the 1st/2nd Rounds of the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament. While we didn’t have the wild ride games of Miami or other sites it was great to watch college basketball at the point where Cinderellas are made or giants fall. Memphis was one of those that almost fell during the first game of the tournament. They pulled it out against Cal State-Northridge and went on to handily beat Maryland in the 2nd round. I tried to post a few items in the blog during the trip and there’s a piece on KC’s strategic vision in an earlier post. For now I’m going to take a couple days break to regroup and recover. I’ve been traveling too much over the past three weeks and need to get a few things done around the house first. But I’ll be back in a few days.
After a full day of basketball in Kansas City and a busy morning touring around a little bit, we have finally settled into the room to watch some more basketball and relax. The games are wild, especially the Pitt-ETSU game. I have Pitt going all the way. What was I thinking? Later we enjoy great BBQ here just down the street at Gates. Yesterday we ran across a great experience in downtown KC across from the Sprint Center called the Power & Light District. Within the district is an open air experience called KC Live!, a collection of restaurants, bars and shops surrounding a stage and courtyard. It is the happening place in KC this weekend. Read more…
Yesterday I got my San Antonio Business Journal in the mail. It crowded my mailbox along with the other mail since I had been gone for three days to SXSWi. While I enjoy the content I am now on a quest to turn of that weekly flow of newsprint to my home. You see until I started subscribing to it I had successfully stopped both my Express-News and New York Times print editions and read them electronically along with Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, Business Week, and U.S News and World Report using Zinio. Where I used to recycle weekly it takes a good month to build up enough to bundle up and recycle. Read more…
It seems the Voter ID bill authored by Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) will most likely clear the Senate along party lines of 19-12. While there has been much debate about the bill and the need for it the bill will be headed to the House where the debate should be more contentious and the vote much closer. The House currently has a 76-74 split between the parties so any cross-over will be highly scrutinized by the party leadership. Within the state Texans overwhelmingly support the concept with 69% in favor of having voters present a government-issued ID (source: UT survey). The question now becomes how you pay for it. Read more…
In this year’s San Antonio city council election scheduled for May 9th we have 46 candidates running for 11 offices. If you discount District 3 in which Jennifer Ramos is running unopposed that brings the tally to 45 candidate for 10 offices. In the mayoral race alone there are 9 candidates running. Break that down to viable candidates and you really only have four candidates. Personally I would contend there are only three which I’ll explain shortly. The real question is why would a person spend the time and money to run for an office that takes up 40+ hours of their week for $20 a week if they aren’t truly viable? Read more…
This past weekend, as many of you are probably aware, I attended SXSWi in Austin. I had to cut the trip short to get some work in this week but it’s still going on. It was my first time but it’s definitely not going to be my last. I’m already planning my trip for next year and plan to pitch it at work as well. Never before have I seen such a great collection of creative web and social media enthusiasts as I did this past weekend. What’s even more exciting are the ideas I got to bring back to the Castro mayoral campaign. To continue that excitement I know Julian wants to talk about these ideas to see how we can help advance civic development in San Antonio through them. Read more…
I ran into Matt Glazer of the Burnt Orange Report during SXSW and found out they are in the running for Best Blog in a poll being conducted by Austin 360, the entertainment arm of the Austin American-Statesman. If you enjoy reading BOR you can help them out by jumping over and voting for them in the poll. The folks that run that blog have been my inspiration for blogging and jumping into this environment of social media. I enjoy it because they provide a pretty darn good perspective of all things blue in politics. Even though the crew is young they are seasoned and experienced and demostrate it in their management of the blog. So give them a boost by voting if you get the chance.
I just got back home after a great weekend at SXSW Interactive with so much information to digest and post up. It may take me a week or so to get it digested. This coming week I’ll be in Kansas City for the NCAA sub-regional games. There’s just not enough time in the day to do it all. So I’ll just mention a few topics I plan to blog about when I get the time. Some of the sessions covered topics ranging from the wisdom of crowds to a discussion on the future direction of social platforms such as Facebook and FriendFeed. A teaser on the later topic – the feed made popular by Twitter is becoming the most popular user experience. One of the most interesting one’s was about Regional Whuffie, a concept of working together to increase social capital and innovation in a community. I think Susan Evans, one of the panelists, sums the concept up pretty well at her blog. A great practice of the concept is in Philadelphia by a group called Junto.org, modeled after a similar effort founded by Benjamin Franklin almost 300 years ago in the same city. More to come on that later. For now, much needed rest.
Today is that day when college basketball enthusiasts gather around the tube and Internet at 5 p.m. to see how the Selection Committee sages set the brackets for the biggest basketball tournament in history. Yes, it’s the start of the NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament, otherwise known as the Road to the Final Four. Okay, now that I’ve gotten all the “official” names out of the way it’s time for March Madness and what madness it really is. Throughout this past weekend so many of the big teams were upset in their conference tournaments. It’s really hard to predict what the brackets will look like. Read more…
Recent Comments