Friday, September 28, 2012

Only a month away from the re-inaugural issue of GV Magazine!

Wow, so much progress since the last time I blogged about the GV comeback!

Our offices are perfect for us and I love working there every day! We finally have phones and internet, and the temperature is finally close to comfortable in there. And we have a real sign on the door! We still have a ways to go when it comes to furnishings, but we're getting there.

Our test/sample issues for web, iPad, Kindle, and Android tablets have been uploaded to our digital vendor and they are busy getting them optimized.

Most of the stories for the re-inaugural November issue have been assigned. The GV Style photo shoot is complete and the feature will be beautiful!

The special re-introductory offer to advertisers have been sent out and we're already getting a great response!

Our ad agency, RSW Partners, is busy working on our new website at GrandValleyMagazine.com. Had a fabulous meeting with ad agency Cobb & Associates the other day and really looking forward to working with them too!

Am excited about getting the subscriber letters out next...

Sunday, September 23, 2012

My last regular column for the Daily Sentinel and the return of Grand Valley Magazine

This post was published as my last regular column in the Daily Sentinel Sunday, September 16, 2012.

This is my last regular commentary with the Daily Sentinel. Writing a weekly column and publishing a high-quality magazine at the same time is, well, quite unrealistic. Yes, it’s time to bring back Grand Valley Magazine.

I’ve worked in media, directly and indirectly, since high school.

Our cheerleading squad did a fund-raising promotion at a local radio station one weekend, and by the end of it, I practically begged the station manager to hire me. I was fascinated. He gave in, and for more than a year I twisted knobs and pushed buttons for the weekly Top 40 and Denver Bronco football games.

From radio, I moved on to ad agencies, then newspapers, books and magazines. That’s where I discovered the ink in my blood. The in-depth features, rush of a breaking story, ...


Saturday, September 22, 2012

Too big to fail; too small to matter

The official reasons for not including third-party candidates in national and local political debates are based solely on those parties’ small size. This idea of too-small-to-matter has become too much of a cliché these days (and not just in politics either).

I, for one, am curious about what these smaller third parties have to say. Do they have platforms? How are their goals and objectives different than the too-big-to-fail parties? Are their ideas in common with or opposed to the big party machines? Might they have solutions to problems that the big machines have been unable or unwilling to solve? Is it possible that those candidates have something worthwhile to say?

It’s bad enough that the voices of the small are drowned out by the boisterous shouting of the giants, but to deny the smaller parties a seat at the political roundtable in a government by the people seems, well, a bit authoritarian.

Perhaps if the other political parties were given the same opportunity to tell their stories and share their ideas as the two behemoths, they...

Thursday, September 13, 2012

World-renowned innovator has roots in Mesa County; and I got to interview him!

The opportunity to gain firsthand insight from a world-renowned innovator is honor enough, but to find out that innovator got his start at Colorado Mesa University (then Mesa College) is downright exciting.

Thomas W. Osborn, a virtual rock star in the world of innovators as featured in a new book from Stanford University Press titled Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations, entered Mesa College as a struggling student with attention deficit disorder back in the 1960s.

“The quality of Mesa’s undergraduate education gave me a very good base,” Osborn told me. The encouragement from and “the influence of professors like Drs. Lenc and Putnam and Mr. Perry” helped him build a strong foundation for his scientific interests.

From Mesa, Osborn went to Colorado State University, then on to Oregon State University where he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and studied the chemical evolution...

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Ancient aliens or unfettered human ingenuity?

A series of TV programs aired recently on History's H2 channel called "Ancient Aliens." I listened as countless self-proclaimed alien experts pointed to all kinds of ancient artifacts that defy their idea of our ancestors' capabilities, and most concluded that they must therefore be the work of advanced extraterrestrial visitors. Entertaining thought it was, there was no doubt in my mind that the marvels they pointed to were the work of humans.
 
Contemplate, if you will, the laser-machined precision of the intricate block cuts of Puma Punku at 12,000 feet in the mountains of Bolivia, the Nazca lines stretching 50 miles across the top of a high plateau in Peru, 2,000-year-old writings describing Vimana flying machines in India, the monolithic statues on Easter Island in the South Pacific, the light bulb-looking Dendera wall carvings and Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, Stonehenge in southern England, and the Antikythera Mechanism with its 29 finely tuned interlocking gears found in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Crete. The list of mysterious marvels from antiquity is seemingly endless.

Not counting the effects of sleep deprivation, junk food and pharmaceuticals on our modern brains, the brains of our ancestors were probably little if any different than our own. We can never know of all the extraordinary...