Category Archives: Winston-Salem

People Behaving Politely

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The Winston-Salem Journal opened up comments on a story about a local Muslim group that is trying to get some land it owns re-zoned for use as a cemetery.  To be honest I expected the comments to be at least a little rough, and perhaps a tad xenophobic.  What I found were several posts, all politely written,  that mostly agreed with the idea that the Muslims should be allowed to build their cemetery as long as it meets all local regulations.

Since the paper reviews the comments I’m not sure if they pulled down any nasty comments or not, but either way it is nice to see people behaving politely online.  If the Journal did pull down or prevent the publication of some nasty letters then maybe the Journal’s policy of review is something the Greensboro News & Record should look at given the problems they are having with "trolls."

From Zero to Launch in 3 Hours, or Behold the Power of Blogs

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First a little background:  I was looking for an index of publicly traded companies in Winston-Salem and I couldn’t find it anywhere.  I figured there weren’t that many publicly traded companies in W-S so I wondered if I could create one myself.  That’s when the fun began.

First I logged onto the Forsyth County Library’s research site, which is free by the way.  Then I used the ProQuest feed from Hoovers to look up all Winston-Salem companies that they track (about 30 total).  Of those I found seven publicly traded companies and I created my own little tracking index on my.yahoo.

I was going to leave it at that, but then I got to wondering if there was any way to get a script that would allow me to post the index on my blog.  Within a few minutes I found a free service called barchart.com. All I had to do was input those same seven companies’ trading symbols into their system and it kicked out a piece of javascript that I could post on my site.  Pretty cool.

Then I thought a little more about it and decided that I’d like to create a blog focused solely on business related information for Winston-Salem.  I’ve been in W-S for about a year and in that time I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research on the local business community and I figured a blog would be as good a way as any to keep track of this stuff.  That led me to create the Winston-Salem Business blog.

Over the course of about 2 1/2 hours I set up the template, built some link lists to local publications, business groups, etc. and wrote a couple of fairly generic posts.  Then I thought it might be fun to see if I could set up a newsfeed for Winston-Salem and Forsyth County business.

Back to my.yahoo I went.  I set up a news search for "winston-salem"+"business" "forsyth county"+"business", and copied the "rss.xml" link.  Then I found a free service called rss-to-javascript.com that allows me to put in any RSS feed and it spits out a piece of javascript.  I can then paste the javascript into my site and voila, I have my own customized newsfeed.

This is pretty amazing.  I’ve essentially built my own customized business news site for next to nothing (I use Typepad which gives me three blogs for a flat fee, so technically I guess it’s costing me about $4 a month).  If I wanted to I guess I could commercialize it with very little effort, although to build readership would take lots of effort and keeping it relevant and fresh even more blood, sweat and tears. 

I guess what I’m most amazed at is how quickly and easily I could physically pull together a business news site.  It just drives home the fact that a properly motivated entrepreneur could pop up almost out of nowhere and start eating the local business press’s lunch.

**Update** While Barchart.com seems to load every time, it looks like by rss-to-javascript.com service is worth what I paid for it (0).  It only loads about 20% of the time.  I’ll try and find a better feed at some point.

**Update #2**  It doesn’t look like it was the fault of rss-to-javascript.com for the non-loading. It seems that Yahoo!’s feed was iffy, so I went with Craigslist for jobs and the Biz Journal for the business feeds.  Only negative is that those "Triad" focus, not the more defined "Winston-Salem" focus I was looking for.  If I can get a more focused, customizable feed I will, but for now this will do.

A Cool Application for Blogs – Kid Tracking

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I’ve been reading the Kenya Blog being hosted by the Winston-Salem Journal, and I’ve noticed that most of the comments are from parents of the kids who made the trip to Kenya and are the blogs contributors.

It never occured to me that one of the great applications for blogging could be staying connected with your kids.  As a parent who will be seeing his kids off to summer camp for the first time next week I can tell you that I would love for them to have the chance to post pictures and write a paragraph or two about their day so that Celeste and I could share their experience without getting in their way.

Please do visit the Kenya Blog as I think you’ll agree that these kids are getting the experience of a lifetime, and their parents (not to mention the rest of us) get to share it with them in a way that would have been inconceivable a couple of years ago.

Now where’s that number for the summer camp…we have to talking to do!

W-S Journal Launches First Blog

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The Winston-Salem Journal has launched its first blog, The Kenya Connection, which is a group weblog done by 16 students and five adults who have traveled to Kenya to help fight AIDS.

My personal opinion is that this is a great way for the Journal to dip its toes into the blogging water.  A community-focused weblog that actually helps the paper cover a far-flung story about local kids venturing out to another community that could not be more different from their own. In other words the paper is sticking to its traditional knitting: content with a community focus and also a window to the larger world.

Thanks to Joe for the link and the update.

Winston-Salem Journal Allowing Comments

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While it isn’t really full-fledged blogging or "citizen journalism", it is a step in the right direction.  The Winston-Salem Journal announced yesterday that they are allowing comments on "certain hand picked stories."

Here’s some of the announcement:

The point of this is
to encourage participation in the news. So if there is a particular
story, somebody’s column or a topic you would like to have comments
available for all the time, email us at webstaff@journalnow.com and let us know. We’re new to this "two-way news" thing too.

As part of the announcement they also highlighted a story that has comments enabled.  In my excitement I decided I had to post a comment. Here’s the text I found in the comment posting window:


Comments will be posted only with the name you enter, but please give us an email address so we may contact you.

Publishing comments is at the sole discretion of this Web site and subject to our Terms and Conditions of Use Agreement.
By posting to this forum, you assume responsibility for your
communications and the consequences of posting them. Comments must not
be obscene, profane, sexually explicit, libelous, slanderous,
defamatory, harmful, threatening, illegal or knowingly false, and must
otherwise adhere to the requirements of the Terms and Conditions of Use Agreement.

Comments should focus on issues raised in the article.  Try to keep comments to 50 words or less.

All
comments are reviewed before posting. Therefore, there will be a delay
period between submission and display of accepted items on the Web
site.
      

Very interesting.  I think they’ve been watching what’s been going on at the Greensboro News & Record, because they have gotten out front with a policy on comments (what’s acceptable, we can refuse to allow comments we consider nasty, etc.) and they are allowing anonymous posts which is an issue that the N & R wrestled with publicly.

While I’m not sure about the 50-word limitation, it will help limit some ranting.  Still I think maybe 150 words would be a little more appropriate.  They do have one neat little tool in their comment window:  they limit you to 500 characters so they put a counter in the window showing you how many characters you have left.  Very helpful!

I’m also not sure about the "reviewed before posting."  I have a feeling it’s a CYA thing, but I’d rather see the comments post instantly and then have them removed if they are inappropriate.  Why?  Because I think it makes the process transparent and preempts the people who will automatically cry liberal (or conservative) bias on the part of the editors if their comments aren’t posted.

All in all I’m pleased as punch to see this.  Now how about getting Carl Crothers (Executive Editor), Jim Laughrun (Managing Editor) (oops, he’s retired), Ken Otterbourg (Asst. Managing Editor) and/or Charlie Elkins (Asst. Managing Editor) blogging like their N&R counterpart John Robinson?

Having “Hooker” in a Headline Will Help Drive Traffic

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My hometown paper, the Winston-Salem Journal, probably saw a nice traffic spike yesterday (Saturday, May 14, 2005).  Since there’s a local furniture company named Hooker they were able to run this article with the headline "Hooker expects up to 7% drop in sales." 

Of course this caught the attention of my favorite sophomoric-humor-weblog, Fark.com, which linked to the story with its own, somewhat more suggestive headline: "Hooker expects up to seven percent drop in business due to wood shortage."

Links from Fark.com have been known to crash sites due to the traffic crush, so my hat’s off to the webguys at the Journal. (Hi Joe.)

Open Invitation to All Winston-Salem, Forsyth County Elected Officials

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If you’re an elected official from Forsyth County or Winston-Salem and
are interested in having your own blog I’ll be happy to host it for you
and even train you to use it.  Just shoot me an email.

I’m making this offer for a few reasons:

  1. Blogs are a great way to communicate with your constituents.  If you want feedback, this is a great way to get it.
  2. Blogs are easy to use once you know how.
  3. We in Forsyth are being left in the dust by the folks in Guilford County.  Frankly it’s embarassing, especially considering it’s Guilford County.  (I’m kidding!)
  4. I just finished reading a book that reminded me, among other things, of the importance of civic duty.  This is one of the best ways I can think of to get involved in the community and "give back" as they say.

Now I have no idea if there’s some law or rule against an elected official taking me up on an offer of this kind, but if there is I’d appreciate it if someone would let me know.  Barring that I hope to hear from some of you soon!

Inc’s Best Places

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This month’s issue of Inc. magazine has a list of the best places for doing business in America.  The list contains 274 cities and ranks them using a formula that measures job growth.  To measure growth they looked at current-year growth, average annual growth over three years and growth over the first and second halves of the 10 years ending September, 2004.

Unfortunately for the NC Triad (Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point) it ranked 234, down from 147 last year.  It really isn’t a surprise given the hammering that the prominent industries around here (textiles, furniture) have taken.  It will be interesting to see what effect the new Dell plant being built here will have on next year’s ranking.

Me being a glass-half-full kind of guy I look at the Triad as a great entrepreneurial opportunity.  Why?  Lower costs (rent is cheap, labor is abundant, and wages are lower due to low cost of living), good infrastructure, good local universities, and great quality of life.  You also have easy access to other metro areas (1 hour to Charlotte, 1 1/2 hours to Raleigh-Durham, 45 minute flight to DC and Atlanta), so you get the benefit of their business without the traffic. So if you’re an entrepreneur come on in, the water’s great.

Speaking of DC: My old stomping ground, Northern Virginia, leapt from 54 last year to 11
this year.  The magazine attributes it to all the war spending, and
interestingly separates Northern Virginia from DC (28, up from 29) and
the Maryland Suburbs (29, down from 25).

They Just Couldn’t Pronounce Pfafftown

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Wal-Mart has decided not to build a supercenter on the corner of Reynolda Road and Shattalon Road here in the western part of Winston-Salem. 

I think it’s a good call for many reasons, not the least of which is that it would have made getting to my daughter’s soccer field an absolute nightmare on Saturdays.  I know that’s a very selfish reason, but that’s me.

Could it have also been that the suercenter would have been right down the street from Pfafftown, if not in Pfafftown itself, and the execs in Arkansas just couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it? Prize goes to the reader that can spell Pfafftown phonetically.

Small Town Living?

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When Celeste and I decided to move to Winston-Salem we felt that we were moving to "small town America." We liked the idea of escaping from the craziness of the DC area, yet still having the amenities we’re used to available to us, namely malls, movies and good schools.

But did we really move to small town America?  Actually no.  I just took a look at the ranking of US Metropolitan Areas from the 2000 Survey, and found that the Triad (W-S, Greensboro, High Point) is ranked 37th in the country by population (1,251,509).  Compared to the DC-Baltimore corridor, ranked 4th with 7,608,070 residents, we definitely downsized but you still can’t say we’re in a small town.  Perception really is everything!

Here’s another surprise: the NC Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) actually ranked behind the Triad at 41st place (1,187,941) and Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill only ranked three in front of the Triad at 34th place (1,499,293).  By 2010 the Triangle should pass the Triad since the growth rate for the Triangle from 1990-2000 was 39% compared to the Triad’s 19% growth.  Add to that all the lost jobs in the Triad from the furniture, textiles, and financial services industries and the Triad will probably fall a bit.

And here’s a fun one to end on: Salt Lake City-Ogden, UT was in 36th place (1,333,914) and they got to host the winter olympics a few years ago.  I say we go for the ’16 Summer Olympics, and put the velodrome in Lewisville.  I’ll even rent my guest room to the highest bidder!