Redesigning with Flickr on our mind

Since we're having so much fun with the Flickr photo contest, we've extended the deadline to February 28th. So far, we have over a couple hundred photos and a few dozen "members" in our group. Not bad for our first run at a digital photo contest, but the real benefit to us has been experimenting with a photo sharing site for our redesign.

Our photos take up a lot of space on our server which is not a huge concern right now, but wait until we we start editing videos in house (our IT Administrator will cringe when he hears that). Sure, there are server benefits for us, but having photos on Flickr also gives us the freedom to interact with others who love rivers and want to share their experiences. Basically, another attempt at online community involvement. And, photos make pretty good sense as our work does involve a celebratory component - have to love it before you can protect it, right?

In addition to the contest, we've also migrated all of our web photo albums (our photo albums are viewed the most) to Flickr. And, if we decide to incorporate Flickr on our new site, we can do so by creating 'set' badges (batch of photos specifically related to one issue, region, etc.).

Creating a Flickr slide(.com) show is a cinch

I've heard of Slide before, but haven't tested it until now. Very cool feature and it plays nicely with our Flickr photos too.

We know our photo album page is the most viewed page on our site (and Convio's photo album doesn't really compare to the stuff that is out there now), so I think it makes sense to play it up a bit on our site.

I'd love good photo use ideas, know of anyone doing this especially well?

Btw, our Flickr photo contest has been extended to February 28, 2007.

Flickr photo contest has been launched

An hour in and we have 6 members to our group - okay, three of them are either staff or friends, but nonetheless we're live.

No photos as of yet, but at least we're off with our first Flickr photo contest.

See our work here as well as the American Rivers group on Flickr's here.

Flickr - ing for our web photos

Growing up stealing was a bad thing. So were lies. But at what age does the line of thinking go from stealing to borrowing and lying to exaggerating?

I think I might have crossed that line pretty early and for web work, well, the term stealing shamelessly often refers to cool stuff. Why else would Joe public be able to view the source of a page? It’s got to be more than just the dork inside of you to giggle.

Soap box moment: good work should be shared. I know, spoken like someone who just stole, but its flattering, right? The Nature Conservancy has launched a very cool photo contest on Flickr...and now so are we.

On top of that we're looking to move all of our publication photos to flickr so that they can become more easily search, stored, and shared amongst staff and potentially the public. Photos can also be geotagged for that worldly view. And folks can subscribe to individual tags too. Check out the Flickr badge in the blog bling to the right. I've become a huge fan of Flickr.

The contest we're running will help us generate cool photos to potentially use on our new website, online and offline newsletter, membership calendar, annual report, and all of the other pubs that call for compelling river images. Very cool stuff that we're launching next week.