Saturday, April 25, 2015

Alaska Press Club Conference Ends Saturday Sunset




Susitna was silhouetted by the sunset as we left the Awards Dinner for the Press Club.  Steve Heimel got honored with a first amendment award and gave a passionate speech about the need to fight constantly to keep the first amendment.







Vera Starbard, and her husband Joe, two of our table mates, took home several awards for First Alaskans Magazine.  She's also written a play - Our Voices Will Be Heard -that's scheduled to be performed in Anchorage next January.  Lisa Phu and Matt Miller from KTOO were also at our table and also got awards. 



There's so much to write about the conference.  I have lots of notes, but didn't have time to do anything with them.  I went to four sessions on data journalism - using data sets to find trends and ways to graphically display them.




I'll try to write more about them, but meanwhile, here's a picture of Andy Eschbacher during his presentation on data mapping.  He works for CartoDB with offices in Madrid and Brooklyn.  They have software for combining data and maps, including a free level, and I intend to try my hand at their tutorials to see if I can get to a point where I can use this.













And then there's the log guy who I met at the last session.  He's from Kentucky, I think he said, visiting a friend in Alaska, and he carries this log around a lot.  There was something about being good when he works with kids.  (I can hear some of the presenters asking, "But where's the rest of the story, you're leaving us hanging  . ."  I think some mysteries are good, and all the readers can create their own story about the log guy. 



What Do I Know?  got some recognition at the dinner - two second places.  One for Best Current Events/News Blog and and another for Best Commentary Blog.  There was also a third place in Arts Reporting Print/Online small organization.  That was for a my Q&A page for the Anchorage International Film Festival.      It's nice to know that others think this little blog is doing some things right.  Thank you Alaska Press Club. 

The Press Club's Facebook page says all the rewards will be posted at their website on Monday.  And the Twitter hashtag #AlaskaPressClub already has a lot of pictures of awards up.
[Update May 3:  Here's the whole spreadsheet of the winners at the Alaska Press Club site]




5 comments:

  1. Very good, Steve. Nice to see your work recognised.

    As for my day, I had a great afternoon chating with some Muslims at street drop-in centres, doing outreach work from several local mosques here in southern London.

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  2. So, tell more about these drop in centers. Presumably you dropped in to chat. How about a guest post? This sounds interesting.

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    Replies
    1. Steve, happened to see this link while researching some other matters this evening. I might just be interested in having this opportunity. It was a good chat, lasting for over an hour. Let me think about it some more...

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  3. Congratulations on the awards. Your blog is a very good one and I'm glad the judges recognized that.

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