WEEK 1

Wow, what a week. Fresh from the PSO I started my first day at KBCS Radio on Monday. The public transportation is still something I have to conquer, how confusing. I ended up in downtown Bellevue because a bus driver told me to take the wrong bus! The News Director Joaquin was nice enough to come pick me up and drive me to the station. He gave me a tour of Bellevue and the first thing he told me is something about the history here: the land used to be owned by Japanese farmers before the internment during WW2 when a lot of them lost their land and houses. Then someone bought up all the land from under them and started making Bellevue the land of corporate headquarters (Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon). So this place was built on the backs of Japanese farmers. Pretty intense stuff.

Anyway, I've been working all week on researching a new CMS system for KBCS and finding partner/affiliate orgs to help raise the profile here and become part of the regional news network we are trying to make (my project). This work fits in nicely with the asset mapping project which is great. I am familiarizing myself with the station (it's in a house!) and all the nice people here. Joaquin also showed me the board they use in case I ever want to host/live produce. Holy moly I am intimidated. I can produce radio in a studio pre-recorded no problem, but live...a whole different story. I'm going to wait until I make some headway with my project before venturing into these new waters!

On a personal note, I cannot wait to explore some of the amazing beautiful natural places here. I live right smack dab next to a park! I'll check in again soon. As Tigre says, TTFN.

Comment from Ben Sheldon on September 2, 2010 - 11:11am

Hi Amber, I feel like I just talked to you yesterday :-) Any updates on how things are moving forward? A few folks (like Rachel) are using Drupal as a CMS. Idealware has some really good comparisons: http://idealware.org/reports/comparing-open-source-content-management-sy...