Final Edition of the Denver Rocky Mountain News Friday, February 27, 2009

As most of you know, I work for E. W. Scripps, the parent company for over a dozen newspapers across the country. I am a project manager for the online department and help to manage and implement pieces of the dot com portions for each of their newspapers.

It is with a sad heart that I write this post. Many of my co-workers (though most I do not know personally) are losing their jobs after today. Back on December 4, 2008, Scripps announced that they would put the Rocky Mountain News up for sale. Unfortunately, a buyer never stepped up. Just yesterday in this press release, Scripps announced that the Rocky was going to publish its final edition today.

My heart goes out to all of these employees. I wanted to thank you all for the dedication to see it through and continue to bring the people of Denver (and the rest of the world through your website) amazing stories and integrity in your journalism. Thank you!

The following video is a beautiful piece put together by the staff at the Rocky Mountain News. I hope you enjoy it and realize the impact this has on SO many people. Not just the employees, but also the city of Denver and journalists across the country.

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Do You Want To Work With Me? Friday, August 29, 2008

Hey all 3 of you readers! I just got word from my manager that they've officially posted the position for another Project Manager (with a focus on Vendor Relations) in my group at Scripps. I've been asked to spread the word to any interested parties and I thought I'd start here!

If you're looking to move to Knoxville, and could suffer working in a cube across from mine, check out this job description and send me your resume. Cheers!

RootClip.com - Friends and Family Beta Launch Monday, February 11, 2008

Hey gang!

Not unlike my brother-in-law Kevin, I too am shamelessly self-promoting the launch of our new website RootClip.com.

Last year, we came up with the idea of creating a website that would build a community around online video, but also challenge people to get creative and collaborate on projects. Our collective brain-child was born and we named him, RootClip. (awww!)

In short, we create a video that starts a story. From there, users (that means all of you) watch the video, then go and shoot their own version of what happens next in 1-minute increments. Think choose-your-own adventure meets YouTube.

Obviously, you aren't going to have our actors, but that's the fun of it. Get creative and use whoever you want, but try to keep them in similar clothing so that the story has some linearity. (Whoa! Linearity is actually a word!! Must remember this for Scrabulous.)

Every 2 weeks, a winner is chosen based on positive votes for their submitted video and that video becomes the next minute in the story and the next 2-week shooting/voting period begins to continue the updated story.

The coolest part about RootClip is that every 2 weeks, we give away $250 to the winner and they become eligible to compete against the other 2-week winners to create the final scene and take home a $2,500 VISA gift card. Cash, money, what?!

So, what are you waiting for? Check out RootClip.com, watch the video, create the next minute, then vote for your favorites. You could win over $2,500!!

Shared Governance Sunday, August 19, 2007

A weekend at a cabin in the Smokies is not what I would typically think of when I think of a business meeting. But, in fact, that is what I did this weekend when my manager took all of the Team Leaders on a retreat. We stayed at the cabin of one of the Vascular Surgeons that we work with. He is a great support to nurses and has a vested interest in helping nursing grow as a profession. I think someone should have done a documentary on what transpired during our time at the cabin this weekend. It was collaborative time of sharing ideas and thoughts on how to improve our processes and introducing new standards for our unit. For those of you who don't know, I work on the Vascular Surgery and Transplant Unit (VSTU) at UT Hospital. We are adopting a Shared Governance model of nursing, so more of the decision-making responsibility goes to the nurses instead of the board or administration. I get to implement some research studies on our unit and use it to bring about change. What a beautiful thing...

I absolutely love working with these crazy peeps! We had a great time.

Joe cooked for us ALL weekend. For his next career, he should definitely be a chef! We had some amazing eats, like, corn pudding, chicken caserole, dressing, lima bean casserole, blueberry bread cake, mississippi mud pie, sausage cheese grits, and Mimosas for breakfast!
I think we all gained 20 lbs over the last few days :)

Yes, that is a Christmas tree in the picture. It was a strange thing...the whole cabin was still decorated for Christmas! They obviously hadn't had time to use it since then!

The Honoree Monday, May 07, 2007

Today, we honored Sonya as an Exceptional Nurse of Tennessee. She was nominated, along with only a handful of people from her hospital, and even had her picture in the Knoxville News Sentinel.

The actual night of the event was really cool! There were dozens of tables set up in the Convention Center and they had a wonderful meal for everybody and their guests. After the meal, they even had 2 different kinds of dessert to choose from; an ama-za-zing chocolate cheesecake and some strawberry weird thing. I’ll bet you can’t guess what I chose to eat?!

After our meal, we had a guest speaker talk to us about how to deal with the emotional stresses in the workplace and a few other things. All in all, it was actually entertaining and even pertinent to my job. When she had concluded, they then announced each honoree and flashed their picture on the BIG screen for all to see. They presented each nurse with a rose and a certificate. We had a great time! Here’s a picture of Sonya with her Nurse Manager, Sandy.

My New Jaerb Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Over the past few weeks, I've been in talks with some people over at E. W. Scripps Networks (HGTV, diy, Food Network, etc.) and have taken a job as a Project Manager for their Online Newspaper division. I'm really excited about this new job and can't wait to get started in mid-September.

I'll be hanging around ORAU for the next couple of weeks helping to get everything in order and bringing people up to speed so that my departure will go smoothly. My time at ORAU has been great and I am extremely thankful for all of the opportunities I've been given as well as friendships that I'll keep.

P.S. "Jaerb" is in reference to a classic Homestarrunner toon. Check it out here!