Dunes Blog

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After several days of testing and working out the bugs, my latest web project, Webinar Central has gone live today.

Webinar Central will become the web’s best destination to find out about the latest free webinars taking place anywhere on the web. It’s the ultimate webinar directory. At Webinar Central, you can view the latest free webinars, submit your own for inclusion and comment on past webinars. We’re harnessing the power of social media to spread the word on the latest educational webinar opportunities.

Key Features of Webinar Central:

• Submit Your Own Webinar
• See Upcoming Webinars for Current Week
• View Month by Month Calender
• Subscribe to RSS Feed of Latest Webinars
• View Webinars by Category
• Comment on Webinars
• Updated Daily
• Ongoing Blog About Webinar Tips and Tricks

Why did I start Webinar Central?

I love to learn and the advent of webinars has revolutionized the way knowledge can be disseminated over the internet. I’ve learned so much from these wonderful tools that I want to make sure that anyone has the knowledge and abilitiy to learn via this medium. There hasn’t really been a central location for all the webinars taking place on the web. There is so much going on, that if you don’t have a way to find out about it, you’ll miss out on valuable learning opportunities. So using some tools that I’ve set up, I’ll be able to monitor for future webinars all across the web and let you know about them here first. Don’t see your webinar in the database? Then you can add it for free by filling out the submission form.

I was very impressed with the coverage on NWI.com of the recent flooding in the area. With no truly local TV station able to provide round the clock coverage, The Times stepped in and provided that coverage.

Their site was continually updated all throughout the recent crisis with the latest information. You could tell their writers were putting in overtime. They literally filled the site with content about the flooding, all the while continuing regular news coverage. It became a place to find out about the latest road and school closings. The kind of invaluable resource we need in this area.

One thing I and many others wanted to see was pictures. NWI.com became a central place where people could submit and view photos of the destruction in the area. It was fantastic. I literally went through hundreds of pictures and personal accounts.

NWI.com is truly becoming an online portal for Northwest Indiana. The design of their site is clean and efficient, it’s easy to navigate around and it loads quickly. Kudos goes out the the team managing the The Time web operations, they’re doing a fantastic job. I’ve managed content myself, but not on this scale, so I know the kind of work these guys do.

As someone who works doing SEO and Social Media, their site is doing a fantastic job taking advantage of these new technologies. The site has video, RSS Feeds, user comments (though I don’t recommend reading them, your I.Q. will go down) and ways to share content on other social networking sites.

I was surprised to see them stream the Gubernatorial debate live last night. This was an awesome thing to do since there really isn’t a way to air that stuff locally on TV (though I don’t know if the local PBS aired it, probably not).

NWI is undeserved by the major media networks because we are crammed between South Bend and Chicago and thus get the TV networks in both cities. Because of this, coverage on the Chicago and South Bend Networks about Northwest Indiana is sparse, to say the least. The Times is filling that void by using the internet to create a portal for NWI as well as it’s own de facto media network, as we’ve seen with them streaming live events.

Let’s hope they keep it up. I’d like to see a web based video network dedicated to NWI and maybe radio feeds or podcasts. I would also like to see them embrace blogs more and maybe create a directory/agrigator of local blogs.

Speaking of blogs. I was disappointed with NWI Bloggers during the flooding. This is probably the worst disaster to hit the area in a long time and many local blogs were silent (though a couple did blog). Keeping in mind that these blogs are run by people and they were probably dealing with the affects of the disaster. But Blogging provides a unique way to citizens to share their experiences and pictures. Granted, I didn’t write much about it myself because Valpo was spared the worst of the floods and I pretty much stayed in to avoid the chaos.

If you wrote about the floods, please send me links to your entries. I’d like to aggregate the links onto one page so that people can see what other people had to say about this terrible disaster.

Just walked in the door from the long car trip back to Valparaiso. It went by quickly. Had lots of great conversation with Nichole. Had an awesome time with my peeps from Livemercial.

The panel at BlogIndiana after lunch was pretty cool. They talked about building communities around blogs, which is something that really interested me. I was also finally able to meet Steve Dalton! Nice to meet ya Steve! Keep in touch!

After that was a session on how to plan out your blog to generate traffic. Basically it was all about content, content, content! Lots of good stuff in that presentation and I learned a lot of stuff that I will be applying to my work stuff and my personal projects. The guys was from Hanapin Marketing were great.

After that I went to the session on building a corporate blog with David Doug Karr. It was really good with some really good questions and responses on some of the issues we face with corporate blogging. Very awesome stuff.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the conference. It was finally nice to see something that I spend a lot of time doing, being validated by so many people who do the same thing. It was also fun meeting fellow bloggers and meeting people who run tech start-ups in Indiana. There is some really cool stuff going on in the Web Industry in Indiana!

I think, quality wise, the second day was better than the first, but that’s just my opinion.

IUPUI has an awesome campus and I fell in love with the IUPUI Campus Center building. I love gorgeous modern architecture like it. That’s why I took so many damn pictures.

Indy was great. Hadn’t been there in a few years. Definitely would like to do a weekend away there with the wife soon. Looks like there is plenty to do and lots of fun to be had.

I hope they decide to have BlogIndiana next year. It was fantastic fun and I definitely will go again!

After lunch we attended the “Blogging and Elections” discussion. It was very interesting and I was really interested to hear what the Obama rep had to say. She came a long way and is really busy, so it was really nice that she was able to make it. I only wish the panel had been for longer and maybe a little better moderated.

After that I attended the Social Media session by myself. I was really disappointed with it. The guy presenting was really nice and I enjoyed hearing him speak. However, it took him half an hour to talk about why we were there. He only talked about Social Media in the ‘big picture’ concepts and quickly ran through two examples when he realized he was running out of time. I was hoping for more tips on how to use social media to generate traffic and revenue. I spend a lot of time in my job doing this (and personally as well). I probably could have given a more substantive nuts and bolts presentation.

The last session was about monetizing blogs. It was pretty interesting. The presenter was selling a product but he kept that until the end and I was actually interested in the product. He was from a new company called iSocket, that’s developing a new ad platform. I was sure to sign up for the  beta. I hope they accept me. I was a little disappointed at how negatively recieved PayPerPost was. I just got accepted into the program for my Ennui blog just yesterday and I was looking forward to making some extra cash doing it. I don’t know if I will now, since it’s so negatively perceived.

After that was over, the crew and I went over to Keystone Mall to the Apple Store. My co-worker got himself a fancy new 3G iPhone and I drooled over all the beautiful macs. Almost bought an Apple TV, but realized it wouldn’t work with my TV; it’s simply too old.

Now, we’re settled in the hotel for the night. Stay tuned for more pictures from today and check back tomorrow for more updates.

Right now I’m eating lunch at blogindiana. Didn’t really care for the sandwiches, so I ate lunch consisting of delicious cookies.

The first morning session was about Legal Issues in Blogging. It was very informative and I learned a lot of principles to apply to my blogs. The presenter was pretty cool and a lot of excellent questions were asked.

The second session we attended was Advanced Corporate Blogging. It was okay, not that informative for us. It really wasn’t that advanced and seemed focused on selling the concept of corporate blogging rather than the nuts and bolts of advanced blogging. We’re already sold on the concept of corporate blogging and are pros at it. We don’t need to be convinced. The presenter was also trying to sell his company’s services, which isn’t really relevant for us and we disagreed with their methods. Oh well.

IUPUI is a really nice campus. I’m very impressed. Who thought the bastard child of Purdue and IU would be so nice.

Oh and Nichole ate my extra double chocolate cookie!