Monthly Archive for November, 2005

Page 4 of 6

New Pantops Development Approved

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 20, 2005 in Development and Law and Justice. 5 Comments

Last year, the Albemarle County Planning Commission voted unanimously to deny a permit to Richard Spurzem to build a new development on Pantops. On Friday, the county and Spurzem wrangled out an agreement in court, and “Gazebo Plaza” will go forward, at the intersection of 64 and 250. David Hendrick had the story in Saturday’s Daily Progress.

The total lack of planning on Pantops is astounding. Traffic can get pretty backed up at the intersection of the two highways there — it’s crazy to install a shopping center at that spot. Development along 250 East has been going nuts, particularly since Martha Jefferson began their move there. Will 250 East become the new 29 North, now that 29 is all but overrun?

Hook’s Covers that Might Have Been

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 18, 2005 in Meta News and Politics. 2 Comments

Hook CoverIn their first issue about last week’s elections, The Hook has provided a clever cover this week. Instead of having their usual one featured story, there are four potential covers pictured: one featuring Governor Elect Tim Kaine, one featuring Supervisor Elect David Slutzky, one featuring the elected school board, and one featuring Sen. Creigh Deeds. It had never really crossed my mind that they have to settle on one their one cover story will be, or that they might mock up multiple candidates each time. This approach provides a great look both at how the media can shape the news and how they do what they do.

AHS Principal Podcast

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 17, 2005 in Education. Closed

Brian Wheeler points out that Albemarle High School principal Matt Hass has established a podcast. It’s not clear to me if this will be a series, or just a one-off MP3 posting, but making the “state of the school” address available for download has got to be useful for the parents of AHS students.

VPTC Blogging Panel

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 16, 2005 in Business. 7 Comments

I’ll be speaking at a Virginia Piedmont Technology Council panel on Thursday (tomorrow). The 90-minute lunch, “‘Casting for Customers,” is all about blogging and business. Sean Tubbs, Edward Cossette, Michael Prichard and I will talk about how businesses can embrace blogs, take part in the Charlottesville blogging community, and use it for the betterment of their business and of the blogosphere. (I wrote a little about this topic last month.)

The event runs from 11:30am – 1:00pm, is held at the Omni, and costs $30 for VPTC members and $40 for non-members. I encourage you to attend.

Experimental Albemarle School Board Podcast

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 16, 2005 in Education and Politics. 1 Comment

Two and a half years ago, I address City Council, proposing that they have a podcast of Council meetings. Of course, we didn’t have the word “podcast” then, so I settled for describing it as a web-based archive of MP3s of each Council session. Nothing happened, of course, but a fella gets used to that.

So, naturally, Brian Wheeler has picked up the ball and run with it. As a one-shot effort, working with Sean Tubbs, he’s created a podcast of the October 27 Albemarle School Board meeting. Brian writes:

I do not plan to create additional Podcasts of the meetings I am participating in, but I hope this will serve as an example that might motivate others in the community to help us get our public meetings available on the Internet. While the City of Charlottesville is able to broadcast their School Board meetings on local cable TV, the County of Albemarle has no similar capability. Podcasting, whether done officially by the School Board or by interested citizens or students, would be a great public service project.

Some business whose customers consist of adults with school-aged children would do well to sponsor an ongoing podcast of Albemarle School Board meetings, putting a brief promotional message for their business at the beginning of each podcast.

Municipal podcasts are useful for a great many reasons, but the two that really stand out are that meetings become more accessible, and a permanent archive of past meetings is created. Both of these are really valuable, certainly more valuable than the cost of putting together such podcasts.

Since City Council isn’t likely to do this anytime soon, it would be great if somebody could TiVo each Charlottesville City Council meeting, MP3 the audio, and turn that into a podcast. I bet Charlottesville Podcasting would even host the audio.

Sideblog