Inside sanluisobispo.com

In an attempt to humanize and therefore endear our hardworking and dedicated Web team to you, the readers, I thought I'd write up some introductions. These should also help you in figuring out who to complain to when problems arise.

So, here, in alphabetical order are your sanluisobispo.com Web team:

• Sally Buffalo — Web Editor. Sally is like the queen of sanluisobispo.com. I mean that in the sense that she's a powerless figurehead in what is largely a democratic system. She's in charge of editorial content on the Web site and is constantly looking for new features to provide. I believe her main purpose is to provide an endless stream of development work, thus keeping me in a job. Thanks Sally.


• Kim Bui — Night Web Producer. Have you ever wondered how the stories that appear in the newspaper manage to get online? No? Too bad, I'm going to tell you anyway. It's not by some magical process, it's done by Kim. She works through the night converting the files that go to the press into files that can be used with our content management system for the Web site. In order to better serve you, she has forfeit sleep and social life, yet does it with a smile on her face.


• Larissa Doust — Web Producer. Larissa publishes the majority of the breaking news updates to the Web site. I think her primary function is to badger the reporters into providing said updates, and she does a phenomenal job. She also keeps track of our Web statistics (things like how many people visited our Web site and what stories were most popular — that's right, she spies on you). Until recently, she also had to spend way too much time creating the morning and afternoon e-mail newsletters.


• Sergio Holguin — Online/Marketing Manager. If Sally is the queen of sanluisobispo.com, then Sergio must be the king. I'd say that also makes him a powerless figurehead, but he's my boss, so I won't. Instead I'll point out that he works tirelessly to bring new promotions to our Web site in an effort to drive traffic. He also gets to talk to the public, which is something they don't let me do. Sergio is manager of both the Online and the Marketing departments, which means he must work twice as hard as everyone else and deserves two paychecks for it. I hope he remembers me saying that when it's time for my review.
  

• Danny Thorogood — Web Developer. Me! I lobbied for the title of "Executive in Charge of Awesomnecity," but they went with "Web Developer" instead. Apparently awesomnecity isn't a real word. Who knew? My job is to take the ideas the other guys have and try to make them actually work. I spend most of my days chained to my desk writing code and keeping things like the crime maps and caption contest running.


• Chris Wickers — Online Sales Manager. Chris is in charge of making sure the Web site makes money. I'm not sure how he does it, but I'm pretty sure I've heard screams of agony come from the sales staff when they don't perform well enough. Without him, we'd all be out of work.

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Edit by "powerless" figurehead Sally
Of course, we wouldn’t have anything to put on the Web site without the terrific work of the newsroom, and especially the photographers who create slideshows, audio and video. Laura Dickinson, who was the paper’s online department before we had an online department, does all three, as well as give up her Saturday night to post all our Sunday stories.
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That's all of us. If you need to contact any of us, you can click our names in this post to send an e-mail. As always, we welcome comments and suggestions.

Posted by Danny