YORE TOWN DEMO COMING SOON

 I’m really excited. Jay Small of Small Initiatives, the Web developer for Yore Town, just advised me that my partner Kevin Hill and I will be able to demo the first phase of our Yore Town site Friday May 22. We’ll spend a couple of hours with Jay while he shows us around and teaches us  to upload content. Then we start doing so. Laurie Hosken, who is writing content for Yore Town, is hard at work gathering material to share the story of local metro businesses for the metro Phoenix AZ rollout , and Kevin and I have started video interviews of local residents who would like to tell their personal stories for the site. We also travel that week or soon after to Yuma AZ to demo the product to the folks at The Daily Sun, our beta community newspaper site.  Perri Collins, Communications Director for the Arizona Newspapers Association, is offering her time to help us with video, and Dee Dees, the “Life Story Lady” and memoir writing expert, will share her expertise as well.

This is probably the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life, after the birth of my son Kevin. This is my second baby, and something I truly believe can be helpful to community newspapers.  And for our local area, it just couldn’t come at a better time. Two local metro Phoenix cities – Surprise (my home) and Sun City – both celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2010, and we’re talking to those government agencies and folks responsible for gathering the celebratory photos, videos and stories, about housing them on the Yore Town site, as the interactive home of their historical celebration.  And I have something of a personal milestone to celebrate as well. The week of the demo launch I turn 60 years old. So me and my second child celebrate our births together.

A local publisher in any community can offer a community service that will be attractive to all age groups, and will naturally gain the support of local governments, and historically-focused agencies and groups. Schools will love it, as will museums, historical societies and city and county governments. It will offer many revenue opportunities such as advertising and sponsorship. It will provide an opportunity for community conversation and the sharing of personal stories without anywhere near the concern for inappropriate content that plague so many social sites or citizen journalism products. It answers the needs of community newspapers – to be a good neighbor, to allow their audience into the conversation, and to make money and build traffic. While licenses are not restricted to just community newspapers, these local media houses with their pulse on the local market and their trained sales staff, would seem the most natural fit.

 The site, www.yoretown.com, will launch this fall. In the meantime, please check out the licensee feature page, If U Owned the Local Yore Town.  Once we have something suitable for public viewing we’ll be scheduling a free Webinar at various times and days. If you’d like to be put on the notification list for the  Webinar, or would like to schedule a private demo, please email me at yoretown@gmail.com or send me a DM on Twitter, to @YoreTown.  Entrepreneurs, industry vendors, business owners, museums, historical societies, government agencies and potential investors are most welcome also.  We are open to partnerships and collaborations that make sense.