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LAVoice.org 2.0: Who's Next, Adios and Thanks
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 Dear Friends:
Good news: LAVoice will have a future - a great one, if the people I've chosen to take over do even half of what they're planning.
I'll name them in a minute, and let them reveal their plans to you in their own good time. But first I want to say a few things about this site.
I launched LAVoice.org back in November, 2002 with this little rant about the mess that Playa Vista was making of traffic on Lincoln Boulevard ...
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I guess I hoped that would set the tone - a personal take on the changing city, a dispatch from the front of the littlest wars we all face: traffic, overcrowding, shelter and the erosion of what's left of green L.A.
It took ... f ... o ... r ... e ... v ... e ... r ... for me to build up any kind of rhythm at blogging, and to attract outside bloggers beyond my good (and eloquent) friends.
I hadn't a clue as to what I was supposed to do. All I knew was that I wanted to invite other voices and try building a bit of an audience for their work. I was windy, naive, and sometimes both at once. (Not that that's changed even a bit.)
But I always stuck to the same dream: that I could give Angelenos a place online where anyone can say anything he or she wants about this city - unedited - about the people who run it and live in it and trash it up and make art and love their neighborhoods and distrust their elected representatives and slug it out on the freeways day after day after day.
After a time, that dream began to solidify. To my utter delight, LAVoice became all that - and more.
We welcomed voices from bowels of the Industry, cultural notes and freeway anecdotes,
esoteric political insight and naked screeds, street art and graphic satire, progressive voting recommendations, gay politics, media criticism and gritty memoirs.
We suffered the occasional flame war, survived a vicious mayoral campaign, fended off hack attacks and server outages, posted the occasional scoop and even had the deep satisfaction of pressuring the government - just once - to avoid doing something really stupid.
I guess what all this adds up to for me is a sense of pride, joy - and profound sadness.
I'm leaving LAVoice only because I have to: Work has just gotten too intense for me to give this site the 3 or 4 hours a day it deserves to stay spam-free, self-sustaining and somewhat fresh, and so I must hand it off to someone who can spare a lot more time and energy.
And this brings me to the only thing that makes slicing off my very arm with a fuckin' rusty hacksaw somewhat bearable: I'm leaving the site in good hands.
Ryan Knoll is a seasoned new-media consultant in the fields of politics and marketing, and his business partner, Scott Schmidt is a well-respected veteran blogger at Spot-on and AOL's Fan House, where he's lead blogger. You may know his pseudonymous blog best, but Scott's also done stints at Gridskipper, Wonkette and many others.
Ryan and Scott approached me (after seeing this)with a plan to not only continue supporting what you and I have built together, but to help it grow by adding new topics and helping new voices to join the LAVoice community.
Pundits will note that they're a couple of Republicans, but while I've been passionate in my own liberal politics here, I've never edited or moderated posts here on political grounds, and neither will they: Ryan and Scott remain thoroughly committed to LAVoice's greatest value - that this site welcomes and respects all points of view, as much as it values your right to disagree vigorously with anything posted here.
I'll let Ryan and Scott tell you more of themselves and their plans for this community in their own good time. But for the first few days at least, they'll be familiarizing themselves with the buggy, rattletrap CMS platform LAVoice is built upon - and deciding whether agreeing to manage it was such a hot idea in the first place. (Kidding, kidding.)
I'm working on bringing some other potential editor/collaborators onto the team, but can't say much more than that right now.
Meanwhile, a number of people have asked what I am up to: In a word, consulting like mad.
The past few months have brought me more work in the realms of information architecture, online and branding design, writing, community development and pre-startup advice-mongering than I'd had in the previous couple of years. Business has been (knock wood) pretty good.
I'm also still working on a couple of long-term personal projects that even my closest friends are still bugging me for details on (without much success), and I've been consulting casually for the excellent global network Metroblogging.com, helping them keep their 52 city captains around the world in touch with each other, sharing best practices, and innovating in ways that will grow their sites and their communities.
Will I ever blog again? Sorry to disappoint the haters, but yep, decidedly so. The medium is so vital and I'm such an addict that giving it up would be close to giving up my right to breathe.
I won't have the luxury of doing anything so deep as LAVoice for quite a while, but I've thought occasionally about starting up HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS again. You'll most definitely see me pop up from time to time at blogging.la. And if they'll have me, I may occasionally return to post something at LAVoice. I like this place, and I really look forward to seeing what becomes of it.
If you hated the site or loved it over the past four years, if you want to toss flowers or dance on my grave - here's the place to do it. This is my last post as publisher. Starting with the next post, you can heap all your ideas and passions on the new guys. It's their show.
I do want to extend personal thanks to a few people whose unswerving help has made this site possible:
- To my long-suffering blog widow wife, Kristina, who gave fathomless love, inspiration and support, and who never lost faith in this crazy idea, even when it stole time from the family and left me surly and exhausted, propped up in bed pecking keys until 1 a.m. like a zombie.
- To Kevin Roderick, who's been a staunch supporter, sounding board and good friend from day one, and whose phenomenal sense of industry and duty probably register somewhere on the world energy market.
- To Sean Bonner - notorious cyclist, web innovator, blogger pal and, now, good colleague, who kept me on my toes competitively and provided rock-solid advice on numerous occasions when I was lost at sea here.
- And most of all, to you, the LAVoice community. Thanks once again to all of you, to everyone who ever posted to this site in articles, comments, or just in spirit. You've built something cool here, and it's still growing.
Onward and upward, to all of us.
With warmest regards,
-- mack
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| Posted by: Mack_Reed on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 10:45 PM
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