I’m off to Vegas today for a week of non-stop multimedia fun at the NPPA conference in Las Vegas.  I am one of 25 coaches for a Multimedia Immersion workshop. The other coaches are some of the top multimedia minds in the country.  Vegas hasn’t seen this much talent in one room since the Rat Pack last played the Sands.

Check out this cool documentary about the history of Vegas from the folks at the Las Vegas Sun.

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I’ll probably be posting often as the workshop develops, so check back often over the next week for nifty multimedia nuggets of knowledge, and inspirational work people involved in the workshop.

In the meantime, check out some of the really great work from other coaches at the conference.

Uprooted – San Jose Mercury News – Richard Koci Hernandez

Will Yurman – Round Rochester

Bill Kaufman – FREEP

Smiley Pool – time lapse for houston chronicle

Black Friday – Evelio Contreras

Tonight is game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals series between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins and some of the video guys from the Detroit Free Press have put together a couple of fun videos during their visit to the ‘Burgh.

Speaking Pittsburghese – Free Press reporter Ben Schmitt learns the language of Pittsburgh

Squid hunting – Buying a squid in Pittsburgh is easier said than done.

And finally, Pittsburgh and Detroit share one thing in this heated rivalry – A real lousy economy

The Associated Press has officially launched its database of Guantanamo Bay detainees today.  The flash interactive features a sortable database, an estimated timeline of Gitmo populations, chart based on country of origin, and information pages for most of the detainees.

The opening line to this post on, Lens,  the NY Times’ new photo / video / multimedia blog is spot on in setting up this audio slideshow about Harlem.

Perhaps the most meaningful assignments for photojournalists are the ones they give themselves.

You can definitely tell the photographer had an intimate relationship with the neighborhood he covered for so many years.  excellent work.

Recently exchanged emails with radio reporter for Bauer media, Adam Westbrook, about his ambitious multimedia side-project oneweekinIraq.net.

He recounts a lot of his approach at Tracy Boyer’s Innovative Interactivity. Essentially, Adam was assigned to go to Iraq for a week to do radio reports on the final days of the deployment for British forces based in Baghdad in Basra.  While there, he shot video and gathered assets for a much larger multimedia endeavor on his own time.

The multimedia package is a rare glimpse into the lives of the British soldiers.  It struck me that while I tend to see a lot of multimedia on the lives of the U.S. troops in my job, I rarely see projects about coalition troops or other countries.

In Adam’s II post, I was struck by his candid acknowledgement of the struggles in putting together a full multimedia presentation on ones own.

“One Week In Iraq” is my first multimedia product and it’s been a real learning curve. From getting to grips with covering for several platforms, to learning how to build a collage; I even taught myself CSS. But at the end of this, I have to ask the difficult question: has attempting to cover the story in so many ways watered down the quality of the final product? If I’m honest I would say yes. In attempting to cover so much, I’ve ended up not covering that much; what’s really missing is a central character and a gripping plot, which sucks you in and spits you out: those ancient elements of storytelling which never change, even if the technology does.”

I can definitely sympathize with this.  Sometimes on deadline, I  go out on an assignment to gather  assets, and don’t always have a clear sense in my head of where the whole story or entire package will go.  Sometimes the story finds you, but it’s a crap shoot. Finding that narrative arc means taking some time to step back and take a thoughtful approach.  And often it means another set of eyes that can see your same story from a different angle.  For me, finding that powerful story arc while keeping so many balls in the air is always the hardest part, but it’s the part that gets me out of bed in the morning.

I can’t get enough of hockey right now.  These Stanly Cup Playoffs have D.C. in a tizzy.  As of right now, the Caps and Pens are six games into an exciting series that will end on Wed. night.  I bought tickets for game 7 and paid more than I have ever paid for a single sporting event.  Which got me to thinking of my hockey roots.

I grew up watching the Rochester Americans in western N.Y., but I didn’t begin to really love and understand hockey until I went to school in Toronto.  In Toronto, the Maple Leafs are bigger than the Red Sox in Boston.  The Leafs are the true #1 home team.  Because of this love of the leafs, tickets to the game are hard to come by and are usually reserved for those who can afford them, or are connected to the companies that by boxes and blocks of seats in large swaths.

For the rest of us, there is the Ontario Hockey League.  The OHL is fast, hard-hitting hockey by young players eager to prove they have the stuff it takes to play in the NHL.  And most importantly, tickets are plentiful and affordable.  It’s hockey for the common man.

This video gets right to the heart of that and does so with strong storytelling.  This video’s strength (like most good videos) comes from its audio.  LOTS of good natural sound.  Personally, I want every hockey video to start with the sound of the stick handling the pick and the pull of hockey tape.  The sound just takes you there.

The use of music is also sparing and fitting and isn’t used as a crutch to fill gaps where no natural sound was obtained.  My only complaint would be that I would have liked some audio from the ice, but I understand how tricky this can be.  Not every crew carries a parabolic mic in their kit.  I certainly dont.

The video is definitely worth checking out whether you love hockey or not.

Editor and Publisher has announced its winners for the 2009 EPpy awards.  The two projects that stuck out to me were:

Left Behind by the San Jose Mercury News

Really strong and inspiring visuals.  Makes me want to run out the door with my camera just watching it.

Talking to the Taliban by the Globe and Mail

This really smart presentation includes interviews with a lot of different Taliban fighters.  Very smart way to approach the story in a different way.

Great piece from the Washington Post just launched. The first video is about a food bank at the Ambassador Baptist Church in S.E. Washington D.C.  I like that they are previewing the next two videos to come.

One on bartending school on May 8

and another on foreclosure auctions on May 11

Some realy great work from clarin.com on the drug cartels. My Spanish is pretty rusty, so I didn’t understand everything, but It’s a testament to the visuals and intuitive navigation that you can move through this interactive and learn a lot without even speaking the language.  Definitely worth some time.

Great interactive display of three videos profiling the women who stay behind while their husbands go off to war.  The videos were all shot on the Canon 5D.   The background noise is distracting in some spots, but the stories are interesting, and the photography is very nice.