We're considering starting up a downtown blog, hosted by your's truly. So if we proceed, what would you like to see featured? Just downtown Oklahoma City, or would you also like to see discussions of what is going on elsewhere, not just in Tulsa and other Oklahoma cities, but across the country?
Would you like to see it focus on development, or planning?
Share your thoughts.
-Steve Lackmeyer

We're considering starting up a downtown blog, hosted by your's truly.

Who is 'We're' ? And by 'Blog', do you mean something similar to this discussion board?

Or would it be more you giving your opinion on subjects and people leaving comments?

No, it would not be a discussion board, though it would allow for comments on blog posts. It would certainly not compete with this site, and could actually drive traffic to it. I guess the best comparison would be to the old downtown guy blog.
- Steve

Just downtown Oklahoma City please. I don't want to see another debate on whether Tulsa or OKC is better. I mean it would be neat to showcase other city's downtown areas but I can't go out on a whim to visit a place that I saw on the blog or whatever, you know what I mean? So if it is focused soley on downtown OKC I think the message will be a lot clearer to your readers.

I disagree. I would like the see featured other high-quality urban developments around the country. We need to see what other cities are doing to revive their downtowns. Also dicussion about downtowns that are already vibrant and what makes them that way.

And honestly, in terms of downtowns, Tulsa isn't even in our league.

Instead of a blog, I'd prefer to see the Oklahoman allow you to do more articles and content every day in the Daily O. There are enough projects going on downtown and enough interest where more frequent updates would be appreciated.

I think it should be based on Downtown and thats it.
But I like the idea of showcasing other developments across the country as Cuatro said, but still focused on OKC mainly.

I think it's a good idea. I just went to www.downtownokcblog.com (http://downtownokcblog.com/)and I see it's for sale. Actually, I went to it just a minute ago and it had a notice about downtown OKC domains for sale and had a long list of probably a hundred domain names, but now it's a Go Daddy parked page, so I'm not sure what's up. Great idea for a downtown blog though.

The page I saw earlier is back up on downtownokcblog.com (http://downtownokcblog.com) . I thought I might be losing my mind and imagining things there for a while. I cannot believe the list of domains available. There are quite a few on that list that will be worth a mint when downtown development is a little further along. Alas, I have no extra money to spend, investment or not. Try a dental bill yesterday for $2,365.00!

On the blog idea, I'm intrigued. Are you thinking that you would write all the posts and then leave it open for comments, have guest posts, or what do you picture it as? Do you see it as development oriented or all-things-downtown? A good idea that would supplement this forum very well. I noticed on the site above that a couple of downtown forums were in the list of names. Maybe Pete should grab those and redirect them to OKCTalk.

Good! :welcome5: to the neighborhood! :tiphat:

Hmmm....This depends. Will you answer questions from "anonymous" bloggers?

snark

Some of us are still bent about how you made us out to be a bunch of conspiracy rubes with no knowledge of what's happening downtown, all the while providing cover for the buffoons at OCURA. Nice work!

If you are curious about how other cities do their blogs, check out DCist: (http://www.dcist.com) It is a website for Washington DC, i think there are links to other city blogs on that website too.

Downtown OKC only please!!! Downtown OKC should be the ONLY focus.

But it should be Downtown OKC (and NOT shared talking about Downtown Tulsa - who typically like to take up all of the space trying to make their city look better and ends up being a pissing match). Let the Tulsa World worry about Tulsa's Downtown.

I think you COULD occasionally periodically have stories about other downtowns (please try to focus on peer cities like Portland, Seattle, Denver, KC, Austin tho and NOT so much on lower cities) and how WE could incorporate what they did into Downtown OKC (like the Des Moines thred discussion here). the blog could have best practices from other downtowns BUT it all needs to come back to - what we have in downtown OKC and what 'could' we be doing more/better.

I'd expect the blog to be about Downtown OKC with sections on Development (office, residential, retail), Attractions (perhaps reviews?), Events, Issues (transit, parking, getting more retail, NBA), so forth. Maybe there COULD also be a section of the blog for best practices - but please hear me out, I DO NOT WANT A DOWNTOWN OKC BLOG THAT HAS A TULSA SECTION. ......


Furthermore, we need a OKC focus on the D-OK and definitely need more content. Like was said, there is much happening downtown yet not enough content on it. You're doing a good job Steve (since it's better that what we had) but if you consider the d-OK is a major metro newspaper, it is at the bottom tier when you consider content about it's host city.

Sometimes I think even Tulsa World does a better job on content ABOUT OKC than D-OK does. We need to focus on Oklahoma City - and certainly in this blog you're proposing, Downtown Oklahoma City should be THE ONLY FOCUS!!

I'd pay no attention to that domain list. You can come up with a million creative domain names on your own for $8 ! I promise that whoever has that site is hoping someone like you will come along and want to pay $500-$20000 for a domain name or a group of domain names.

Also - by the date on when that domain was registered it is very possible that somebody here registered it, somebody that you know. It is also registered privately. Have you mentioned this idea to anybody else in the past month?

There are engines running on the internet that constantly look for domains that you type in that aren't purchased, or secretly tap those "type a domain name here to see if it is available" sites. You check it... if it gets a second look within a certain period of time, then bam... the lurkers purchase it. It's all automated.

I just woke up and I had an email back from the guy that has all the OKC domain names for sale. I had written yesterday morning asking the price for the blog domain. The DowntownOKCBlog.com (http://downtownokcblog.com) is $150.00. That and downtownokcnews.com are the only two he's willing to sell by themselves. Apparently, all the rest are directly related to property and downtown development. He quoted $150 for one of them and $250 for both. It's obviously a lot more than we could have paid for that name but we didn't register it and he did. I had also asked about the cost of the whole shebang and he wouldn't give me a quote. It's all up for bid and he's not quoting prices for anything else. Oh well, that was the only one that was interesting for the downtown blog purpose anyway. I guess for someone that wanted to be Mr. or Ms. Downtown Blogger $150 might not be that much to pay for a high profile URL, but I'm still getting over that $2,000.00 PLUS dental bill. You can't walk into the dentist office without shelling out some big cash. I got in the wrong business. Not that I have time to blog anyway. Posting here takes up enough time, OKCTalk is seriously addictive.

I'll bet www.okctalk.com could get far more than $150.
;)
-Steve

I'll bet www.okctalk.com could get far more than $150.
;)
-Steve

An established and already developed site would get far more than that. Pete bought OKCTalk not all that long ago. So, Pete, what did you shell out? Just kidding. :)

For all of you who have questions about my thoughts about this site and others, I've put up links to this site and put up some comments about the local new media on my new blog, OKC Central — Just another Blog.newsok.com weblog (http://www.okccentral.com).
-Steve


We're considering starting up a downtown blog, hosted by your's truly. So if we proceed, what would you like to see featured? Just downtown Oklahoma City, or would you also like to see discussions of what is going on elsewhere, not just in Tulsa and other Oklahoma cities, but across the country?
Would you like to see it focus on development, or planning?
Share your thoughts.
-Steve Lackmeyer

Excellent job Steve. Nice post about this forum!

Steve, I like the work that you've done. jsenter does not represent a majority viewpoint... at least not on this forum.

Great work, Steve!

Back to topic everyone please ....

Thanks for the nice words all the way around, Steve!

Great work on your blog Steve. And thanks for all you do to keep us informed on the renaissance in Oklahoma City.

Thanks again. I've given all of the suggestions in this thread serious consideration, and the blog will be primarilly interested in downtown Oklahoma City, with occassional references to other areas when relevant.

Thanks for plugging OKCTalk, Steve!

Thanks for mentioning me, Steve. :) Along with other fine posters like metro, Doug Loudenback, Cynthia, and Shane. I feel honored to be part of that group!

Here's my blog post on Steve's new blog (and other content) ... might he be "The NEW Downtown Guy?" Here's hoping ... Doug Dawgz Blog: The New Downtown Guy? (http://dougdawg.blogspot.com/2008/02/new-downtown-guy.html)

Pete, can you share what the membership and visitor count is for OKC Talk? (I understand if you can't). Just curious.

steve-
just curious... maybe i'm wrong, but i was under the impression that 'okchistory.com' is yours, too. if so, what are your plans for that site in light of the new blog? are you going to keep working on it or phase it out? -M

Here are some quick stats on OKCTalk:

4,200 registered members; 1,500 in 2007 alone
125,000 posts; 50,000 in 2007 alone
Over 100,000 visitors, 48,000 in 2007 alone
Number of members, posts and visitors grew almost 50% in 2007, the site's 3rd full year

2007 was a great year for us. The best we've ever had.

I'm looking forward to even more members joining in on the discussions.

So, if you're just reading ... sign up and join us!

mmm, OKC History is a separate site operated by Jack Money and myself in connection with our local history books (notice books is plural?). We went a month or so without posting when the ISP database for the site crashed. We then had to rebuild. Nope, OKC History isn't going anywhere and we will soon be posting on a weekly basis (so far it's been sporadic). OKC Central is part of NewsOK (http://www.newsok.com).

Congrats on your new venture(s) Steve..

Steve, I subscribed to your blog and have been reading in BlogLines. I must say, you have done an excellent job of launching the blog and the content is superb! Continued good luck - this adds a lot to the OKC online community.

Thanks Solitude!