danliveshere.com » basketball

Trying Out Yahoo Live

Dan — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:04:39 +0000

Ok, there are so many of these services out there… Qik, Justin.tv, YouTUBE is rumored to be bringing live streaming… so I’m testing out Yahoo Live to see how I like it for the Trail Blazers. Getting behind the scenes footage is always a challenged, but sometimes it is the editing that is the largest hurdle. Finding time to edit the 4 hours of video that is shot into a 1-2 mintue short. Streaming live from certain events might be the way to go. So, I’ve created a really boring live stream of me working. Yeah, boring, but I’m going to see how it works from the backend.

The Season Is Underway

Dan — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:57:16 +0000

What a crazy last couple of months. We really have had no downtime here at work… 1) We took on the interactive marketing for the Rose Quarter. This is no small feat as there are a lot of events that go on at the Rose Quarter. 2) Upped our coverage of the team in the off-season (Jim Taylor, BlazersEvangelist, traveled to New York and Las Vegas to cover the draft and summer league) 3) Brought in a new email marketing tool, Eloqua. This tool has some really remarkable features including a good integration to CRM and automated work-flows for drip marketing campaigns. 4) Greg got hurt. This one was tough since there was so much buzz about all the guys coming back early and playing together. Greg doesn’t get out on the court, but we will cover his comeback (video features of his rebhab, checkins with the trainers etc) and will be able to involve him more than if he was playing. 5) Launched our new season campaign titled “Rise With Us”. Pretty cool in that it goes beyond the organization. We will be placing cameras in the hands of the players, fans, employees to show what it means to be a part of this team. We should capture some really exciting footage of locker room talks, fans getting ready for the games, players on the road. I’m excited to see some of the stories unfold. More about Rise With Us in a future blog post. 6) Make It Better. This is relaunch for our Community Outreach program. We are launching this today and is to show how the whole organization “Makes It Better”. I think it is really cool all the work that the employees here take part in on a weekly basis. From the weekly projects in the summer to the larger projects during the season. One of those large in-season events is coming up on Monday next week (Harvest Dinner). We will be feeding over 5,000 homeless people here at the Rose Garden. The players get involved and man the food line, I think this year I’ll be helping with haircuts. I doubt I’ll be giving haircuts, that duty ended in college… probably helping with crowd control. 7) Upcoming Greg Oden Bobblehead night (Friday, November 9) and 90 & 92 Heritage night with Drexler, Porter, Williams, Duckworth and Kersey (Tuesday, November 13). I don’t want to turn this into a promotion of all the events the Trail Blazers have coming up. More of, wow… there is a lot of work that has been done here at the organization… and still a lot more to come. Iamatrailblazersfan.com continues to grow (over 8,500 members) and will be working on getting more this season. This is going to be a focus of mine in the next couple of months on how we can improve involvement in the social network. I will save all my current thoughts about social networking in upcoming posts, but they include: Facebook (I’ve found really good value so far with FB), LinkedIn (Is this like collecting baseball cards?), Twitter (one of the reasons I haven’t blogged in awhile), blogs in general, and finally Google’s announcement to Open Social.

Today is a 3-on-3 Extravaganza

Dan — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:12:43 +0000

Ok, let me start off by saying, I played highschool basketball. By no means was I the best player on the team… however, I was fortunate to start most of my career. That was waaaaaay too long ago. And as time has eaten away at my vertical leap, it has also eaten into the amount of time I can set aside to playing ball.

College was the first time in 10 years when I hadn’t been on an “organized” basketball team. I played intramurals and loved doing so, but that is a poor substitution for having strategy, plays, a game plan for your own players strengths, a game plan for the opponents strengths. Practice. These are all things that go out the door during intramurals. Now, some intramural geek will probably comment saying that they were hard-core and had some crazy 1-2-2 press they ran when they made a basket. (These are the same nerds that tape a playbook to their arm for football intramurals). Meeting people, joining organizations, school work, staying up late… all these things got in the way of playing basketball. Once I graduated college I went into the work-force and had to work two jobs to make sure I could pay rent. I didn’t live in some pimped out palace, my jobs just didn’t pay. So between two jobs and staying out late, and of course, meeting people, basketball suffered. Now I would play an occassional pick-up game or in a rec league, but once again, it pales in comparison to actually playing on an organized team. That brings me to today. I have an awesome family which I want to spend as much free time with as possible… Jack, my 4 month old son, Jack, just learned how to blow a razzzberry with his mouth. Yes, I’m easily entertained. I also have a job that I love with a great BASKETBALL organization. Funny how things come back into your life. Today I will be playing with some of my fellow teammates here at One Center Court (the home of the Portland Trail Blazers) in a 3-on-3 tournament to benefit Oregon Special Olympics. Great cause and a TON of teams enter. We have over 500 this year! I’ll be playing in the Corporate Challenge against other corporations. I’m not sure if these other teams have practiced… but we did at the Practice Facility and are ready to take it to them. Of course, my hand is bruised, I already have blisters, and I think my left ankle might become dis-attached at any moment, but at least, I get to play basketball.