Streetsblog

This weekend, I'm at a training program for the Annenberg Fellowship I discussed last week.  As a result, I didn't have the time to put up any new material for today, but here are some ideas that I wanted to share that for some reason or another haven't been turned in to full stories.  If this feature proves popular, maybe we'll make it a regular feature.

Now that last week's fundraiser is in the books, we wanted to update you on what we have planned in the events department over the next couple of months.  We'll have a lot more on each of these events in the coming weeks, but for now, here's what we have on tap:

The second part of our new series introducing and interviewing the members of our local board of directors. While I don't think anyone that reads Streetsblog with any regularity needs an introduction to Joe Linton, he provides some interesting perspective not just about CicLAvia and advocacy, but also about the role of the Internet and blogs in changing the way people communicate and advocate.

Two weeks from today, on April 15 at 6:00 P.M., Los Angeles Streetsblog will roll back into the Eco-Village for our 2nd Annual Eco-Village Fundraiser.  Since our announcement two weeks ago, a lot of you have volunteered to help make the event a truly memorable one.

As most of our regular readers know, the past year has been an exciting one for Los Angeles Streetsblog. One of the most exciting things was the creation of a Board of Directors to help guide our Los Angeles efforts. In the coming weeks and months, we'll be doing a series of audio and video interviews to introduce you to our team. Today seemed the perfect day to do our video series with the Safe Routes to Schools National Partnerships woman on the ground in Southern California, Jessica Meaney because tomorrow the Los Angeles City Council will be voting on whether or not to go forward with a new plan for making our streets safe for children to walk and bicycle to school.

You may have noticed something different about Streetsblog's comment system this morning. We’re doing a tech upgrade and introducing a new commenting platform called Disqus, which we hope will enrich the conversation here and make it easier for you to connect with other readers.  Los Angeles is the last Streetsblog to switch over to Disquis, so hopefully most of the bugs have been worked out by now.

(Update:  Apparently we only rolled this out on NYC Streetsblog thus far, but we'll be adding this to Los Angeles Streetsblog soon. - Damien)

Above is a reaction to the Un-Conference from a UCLA "Bruin for Transit." See Jeff Wood, from Reconnecting America and the amazing email update "Other Side of the Tracks" react to the conference at a StreetVid on YouTube.