Dan Gillmor, a noted journalist and chronicler of the technology business, recently gave an interesting speech at Columbia University. I thought it might be of interest to readers of OlyBlog, because of how it describes the kind of thing that Rick has started here. You should read the full text on his blog, but the key sentence for me is this:

Everything I've been working on in the past few years is about an evolution of journalism from the lecture mode of the past to something much closer to a conversation.

Visit OLYMPIAIMC.ORG!

There's a lot going on with the project to build an Olympia Independent Media Center (IMC)! Its a great time to get involved! There will be an Olympia Indymedia meeting 6:00 pm Tuesday, May 16 at Media Island, 816 Adams St. (by the public library). Help build our new IMC website and media production space!

Finally, Olympia IMC has space to create media. Media Island is offering us a whole room for media production. Media Island also has a lot of equipment we can use like a copy machine, computers, printers, video equipment and more. Help make this space and equipment useful to local media activists.

The Oly IMC website is live! There is still alot of work to be done on it, but the newswire is working and people are already posting to it. To post, click on "PUBLISH >>" on the left side of the page. You can be a part of creating a new open publishing news and media node for the Olympia, WA community!

Thursday, May 11th 2006, Olympia Washington

On Monday, the Tacoma News Tribune mentioned (casually) that the first Stryker Brigade which went to Iraq would be going back by the end of May, through the Port of Olympia.

Thursday morning, the Port of Olympia has five Coast Guard fast boats (These belong to the MSST unit from Seattle, unit number 91101) in the water, and 10 or 15 men on the quay doing "training."

When is the next high tide? Which ship is heading through Nisqually Reach or the Tacoma Narrows as you read this? Which mode of transportation will the Stryker vehicles use - rail, road? Those vehicles have not yet arrived, and the Port's observation deck is unlocked (which is unusual for an actual loading operation). The troops on the quay might actually be on a training mission, to be rolled into a protective mission as the vehicles arrive. Who knows? Let's see what collaborative journalism can accomplish.

By the way, the 833rd Transportation Battallion public affairs officer (Heidi) had no comment. And she still wonders which papers I write for. ("Who are you with?" "I'm alone, why?" "Who do you write for?" "I wrote for a bunch of papers, but I'm not on assignment, I'm myself." "The 833rd Transportation Battallion has no comment at this time.")

Maybe your results will vary, if you can cite an actual newspaper for targeting by the DOD's TALON program: her number is 206-764-6503.

The Port's payphone (at the observation deck) is 753-9794. Maybe someone will pick up and tell you what's going on.

Following up on the recognition we got this week for doing citizen journalism, I thought I'd share some of the data on traffic to the site. Just judging from the number of folks who post content, you might guess that our readership is quite small. Well, here's the numbers:

• 21,861 -- The total number of page loads over the past 30 days. (Via Statcounter.)
• 9,521 -- This is the total number of unique visits to OlyBlog in the last 30 days. A visit is unique if there hasn't been a page load from that IP address for at least 3 hours. (Via Statcounter.)
• 705 -- The daily average number of page loads over the past 30 days. (Via Statcounter.)
• 307 -- The daily average number of unique visits (over the last 30 days). (Via Statcounter.)
• 221 -- The number of registered users on OlyBlog.
• 95 -- The number of links to OlyBlog from 38 other blogs. (Via Technorati.)

The short story is that between 300 and 500 people look at the blog each day, looking at a couple of pages each visit. Of the 221 registered users, roughly 50 have been "active," i.e., posting to the front page or making frequent comments. For a more qualitative take, I must say that I'm amazed every day by what a wonderfully collaborative endeavor this has become. I love the rich and interesting ideas that everyone has contributed to the blog (not to mention the creative usernames people come up with; current favorite: "username"). My only wish is that even more people begin to contribute original material -- cover events that they attend, write about their neighborhood, or opine about city politics.