Say hello if you go to Raleigh Wide Open

Tomorrow is a big day for downtown Raleigh. The $221 million convention center officially opens. A noon ribbon-cutting starts things off, followed by two days of celebration with Raleigh Wide Open. Check out the full list of free events, which includes a Chuck Berry concert and more.

I’ll pretty much be living downtown for the next two days because I don’t want to miss a thing. If you’re going to check out the convention center this weekend, be sure to stop by the 30THREADS/MyNC.com booths. They’ll be in front of the motorcoaches parked in the 150,000 square-foot exhibit hall.

But if you’re stuck at work tomorrow and can’t see the ribbon cutting, don’t worry, we’re bringing it to you. We’ll be live streaming the event at noon tomorrow on the 30THREADS live page. We’ll also be providing updates throughout the afternoon.

Then on Saturday, I’ll be back again in the morning and early afternoon. So stop by and say hello. Don’t be a stranger.

The ice cream truck came to work today

Talk about a job perk. Our bosses ordered the ice cream truck to come deliver some treats to our staff today to thank us for our hard work. I went for the classic cherry screwball (You know the plastic cone with the gumdrop in the bottom).

I’m pleased to present 30THREADS.com

I feel like covering the screen with a hundreds of OMGs. OMG OMG OMG … But I will spare you of such an annoyance. But please realize that’s how incredibly excited I am about this announcement: Check out 30THREADS.com.

It’s a project that I’ve been working on for months (here and there) with my co-worker Wayne Sutton. For a while, it seemed as if it would never come to fruition. But on Wednesday, July 30, we unveiled it to the public at the Blogger Bash (that’s the news you missed if you were unable to attend).

The site features the best Triangle-area blog posts, news articles and other random online information that Wayne and I think fellow Triangle residents may find intriguing.

We will introduce the articles with a little commentary, provide a blurb from the post or article and then share the full link so you can click over for more information, if you’re interested. Our goal is to entertain, inform and introduce you to new local sites that you never knew existed.

You know that feeling when you stumble upon a new local blog that you never knew existed. That “I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this” feeling washes over you. (You probably experienced this the first time you found my blog, j/k). Well, I hope that starts happening to you more often once you start exploring the blogs that we feature.

But it won’t always be blogs. Sometimes we’ll feature interesting news and feature articles, as well as content from other random web sites. The only thing all of our posts will have in common is that they will either always be written by someone who lives in the Triangle area or they will be about the Triangle area itself (like if the New York Times writes an article featuring something Triangle-iffic we may choose to highlight that).

Anyway, if you head over to the site, you can see our introduction video, which provides a decent rundown of how the site works.

But don’t worry, I am not in any way abandoning Ginny from the Blog. I so love sharing my Triangle experiences with you and the comments and ideas you all share with me.

If you have any questions, let me know. And thanks to everyone who made it out to the Blogger Bash. It was so fun to meet so many of you. The energy in the room was high that night.

Ginny from the Blog gets a makeover

I took my blog to the stylist, resulting in the changes you see here. I’m jazzed about the new design, which is a little cleaner than my previous three-column blog. I’m still having a few things tweaked, but this is pretty much what my blog will look like for the near future.

You’ll notice the featured photo to the right, which I hope to swap out every day or so. If you click on the photo it will take you to my Flickr page, where you can see even more of my photos. Below the photo is the featured video, which will likely be a video that I’ve already included as part of a blog post, but you never know. Special thanks to Wayne Sutton and Graham Hensley for all their help.

I’m working on updating my blogroll, which somehow got lost in the shuffle. My Twitter widget doesn’t work yet either, but hopefully it’ll be fixed soon.

Other than that, I’m open to suggestions. Hope you like the new look.

Time for a text messaging competition

Triangle-area teenagers will face off in an instant messaging competition from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh. The winner will compete for a “VIP Jonas Brothers concert experience.” The Jonas Brothers are a big deal among tweens and some teens. I know this because my 13-year-old sister literally has more than 40 posters of them plastered to her bedroom wall (which is pretty creepy, but I guess I probably had a similar amount of New Kids on the Block posters decorating my bedroom back in the day).

Check out the friendly text messaging competition my co-worker Wayne Sutton and I staged this afternoon. We both used our Blackberries, which neither of us are used to texting on, so we were at equal disadvantage. We need to know who won.

Everything will be OK

My blog is undergoing surgery. At last check it was in stable condition. Everything will be OK. It’s expected to have a speedy recovery.

In the meantime, read Ginny from the Blog here.

I’m not going anywhere …

But my hosting is. We’re in the process of upgrading hosting of my blog, so it’s slightly possible that ginnyfromtheblog.com may go dark sometime during the next few days. If it does, don’t freak out. Don’t call my boss and say: “Dude, where’s Ginny from the Blog.” Instead, just wait patiently or access it by typing http://blogs.wncn.info/gskalski into your browser.

Thank you kindly. Most Sincerely, Ginny.

Get your citizen journalism on

I’ve wanted to be a journalist since middle school. I loved reading my hometown newspaper, and when a reporter from the paper came to speak to my English class, I thought she was a celebrity. How cool would it be to get paid to be noisy, I used to think. So I did the whole college thing and the whole grad school thing, focusing on government reporting. I wrote obituaries. I had internships covering cops and state government. I was obsessed with the idea of becoming the city hall reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

But times change. And this thing called “the Internet” started to seriously impact the newspaper business. Not only were people getting more of their news *gasp* on-line, but blogs and other Web sites made it easier for everyday folks to become reporters. I saw the value in climbing aboard, so I took this gig as a community content manager for MyNC.com, where I oversee all the user-generated content and also try to drum up stories from citizens living in the communities that MyNC focuses on.

I used to scoff at the phrase citizen journalism. But that was before I was familiar with awesome local blogs like Bull City Rising and the Raleigh Connoisseur. Those bloggers don’t wait for the local media to cover things happening in their cities, they do it themselves. And one of the things that I love about MyNC is that it allows every day people to submit their own stories, photos (and soon, videos). We’re still in beta, working some issues out, but I’m so excited about the platform we’re providing for the greater Triangle community.

Anyway, I bring all this up because I’m sitting on a panel that will discuss the evolution of citizen journalism and its role in the larger media landscape. The panel is part of the Citizen Journalism Academy that the Society of Professional Journalists is sponsoring Saturday, June 7 at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C.

The academy is open to the public and covers all aspects of how to be a good citizen journalist — from ethics to responsible reporting. It only costs $25 to attend. So if you’re a budding or practicing citizen journalist, I strongly encourage you to sign up to learn more.

A glimpse inside the breakroom refrigerator

Warning, watching this video means you’re giving up one minute of your life that you’ll never get back.

Is this sort of how your company’s refrigerator looks? Do you still carry a lunchbox?

Scooby Doo took a bike ride to work with me today

I rode my purple beach cruiser to work today. You may remember that I took it to the bike shop a few weeks ago to be repaired, and even though they didn’t do a very good job, I decided to chance it and give up my car for the day.

It cost me $35 to fill up my VW Golf yesterday, so something has to change.

So I filled up the Scooby Doo book bag my sister gave me a few years ago and hit the streets. It was pretty fun, especially when I was going down hill.

I can’t promise this biking to work thing is going to become a regular part of my routine. First, my bike is one speed, which makes getting up the hills a bit of a challenge (though avid-biker Donald swears it’ll get easier after two weeks). Second, I was a little sweaty by the time I got to the station, and it wasn’t even hot or humid out this morning. So I can’t imagine how icky I’d be during the summer. There’s no shower at work.

It took about 30 minutes, but of course I had to stop and take pictures. I think if I stick with it, I can make it to work in 20 minutes, which isn’t bad.

(I took a pic of my Scooby Doo bag because I think it’s too funny that it’s the only book bag I own).

If any of you can offer some tips on how to bike to work on warm mornings and still manage to look somewhat fashionable, I’m all ears. I know I’ll need a bigger bag, but cramming clothes, shoes, make-up and all my work gear into one bag might become tricky.