Okay, enough about queers.

Let’s talk about beer.

Portland, Oregon is something of a micro-brew mecca.

For those who would love to know how all that happened, I suggest you click on
here where you can get as plenty o’ info on the subject.

Or you can check out the Oregon Brewers Guild here.

Beer not enough? Willamette Week has just published Drink: 2007 a comprehensive guide to to “The City That Drinks” that includes over 150 bars, taverns, dance clubs, divey joints, hotel hotspots and plenty of other places to pass out in.

Drink up!

It just so happens that AAN’s big confab is taking place at the same time of Portland’s fab Gay Pride Festival. Co-winky dink? I think not.

For those who have a little extra time on their hands and want to participate in one of Portland’s most colorful must-see events, head over to PrideNW.org to get the low down on Storm Large and her “Balls” (of Rockstar Supernova fame), dykes on bikes, parades (for both people and pets) and all the other activities that will take place at the Pride Fest in Tom McCall Waterfront Park on Saturday and Sunday, June 16th and 17th.

For alternative events that will be going on around the city (including a street party in front of the Ace Hotel on Father’s Day) check out Willamette Week (wweek.com) as soon as you hit town. Need more titillating information? Contact convention chair Byron Beck at bbeck@wweek.com. He’s a big homo who has already promised AAN’s “gay caucus” (all six or seven of them) they will have a really good “gay ol’ time.”

Or you can download (from the Portland Oregon Visitors Association) a pdf of “Gay Portland: A resource guide for the GLBT visitor” at www.travelportland.com/glbt/. The “Gay Portland” brochure highlights Portland’s resources for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender visitors.

A few minutes ago, I posted a comment on this blog, and I thought, “how come there’s that dumb question mark next to my name and not a picture?”

I thought it might have to do with the fact that I hadn’t registered for the blog yet. So I registered. But I didn’t see anything asking me for a picture.

Then I noticed that, up on the top of the profile page, there’s a tab called “gravatar,” which sounds a lot like “avatar,” which usually refers to the little picture thingy next to your name online. So I clicked on it. But I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with what I saw there.

I emailed Laura, who sent me to Gravatar.

I registered there, using the same email that I used to register for this blog. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to do it, but I managed to get my picture up there. Basically, all you need is a headshot of yourself (or whatever image you’d like to use) and a few minutes to make sense of the interface. This blog automatically imports your gravatar, as long as the email address you used to make the gravatar is the same as the one you used to register for the blog.

It’s a nerdy, populist idea: folks in the audience of a lecture often know just as much as the speaker, so why not have everyone contribute? It’s called an unconference [wiki], and the idea is to democratize the convention experience.

AAN will experiment with an UNconference by hosting a special, free-wheeling session on “Blogging for Journalists,” during the 2007 Convention in Portland, OR.

I’ll guide the session along with an outline of topics, soliciting best practices contributions from UNconference attendees, and - of course, blogging the results on the community convention blog at Portland2007.AAN.org. Later, I’ll work the results of the UNconference into a session on Blogging for Journalists I’ll be leading for the 2007 batch of Poynter College Fellows. [I was a Reporting & Writing Fellow in ‘04].

Interested in attending? I’m hoping to keep it fun and informal (bring beer) while keeping it useful (bring good beer). Lemme know what time works for you in comments.

Fellow AAN webbie types (and those who love them)…

I’ve been asked to give a presentation (and follow that up with a white paper) at the convention this year on the topic “Online Event Listings Best Practices.” While I’ve made it my mission to surf many, many member (and non-member) websites to get ideas and see what works, I thought I’d check here to see if I could generate a response or two here to the following questions:

1. Do you (techie, editor, publisher, etc.) feel like your pub is *currently* doing a particularly good job of listing events on your site? If so, please contact me and let’s chat about what you’re doing different or particularly well.

2. Are you working on (or have you recently completed) a new event listing tool? Or a new implementation of event listings? If you’re out there and I haven’t talked to you yet, please let me know so I can get the scoop.

3. Have you done any local market research or focus groups regarding event listings online and/or in your paper? I’d very much like to talk to anyone who has done such a thing.

Please reply here, call me at 601.362.6121 x3 or write me: todd at jacksonfreepress dot com. Anything that needs to be embargoed or should be kept confidential, etc., will be — but if you can contribute to this “best practices” effort, it will be very much appreciated. Thanks!

- Todd Stauffer
Publisher, Jackson Free Press

After seeing the success of South by Southwest Interactive’s Community Blog, we decided to put together a similar blog for the upcoming 2007 Portland AAN convention.

The folks at sxswi did a great job - but we’re alt-people! We can do better.

So, in addition to the free-for all community blog postings about meetups, Portland adventures and othermessage-board-esque content, Portland2007.AAN.org will feature coverage of convention sessions, nightlife and industry musings from AAN members like yourself.

We’re also creating a print newsletter from the content on this blog, as a real-time example of creating content once and publishing it in multiple mediums.

If you’re reading this post, it’s likely that we’ve asked you to contribute a post regarding convention sessions and/or your thoughts to the blog during the AAN convention. If you’ve stumbled across this randomly, and would like to contribute, please let us know!

I’ve created some sample posts on this blog to illustrate the various ways folks can use the blog.

Please let me know if you have any questions - or ideas on improving what we’ve already started!

Sincerely,

LauraFries.com
Web Director, AAN