The YourHub staff and about 100 citizen journalists celebrated the first anniversary of YourHub at ColoradoSprings.com Thursday at The Gazette.
It was an exciting time as YourHub contributors met each other for the first time. It's always fun to shake hands with folks who - prior to meeting them - had been only a name in print.
It was gratifying for me - and I'm sure for the YourHub community journalists - to see so many people walk in the door. We had invited everyone we knew. But we didn't know what to expect. The party was supposed to have started at 5:30 p.m. One guest arrived at 4:45 and by 5 there were a dozen people there.
YourHub is all about connecting us, sharing information and creating community. From the minute this event started, that feeling, that spirit came to life. It was magic.
We recognized the Writers and Photographers of the year in each of the five YourHub zones. They each received a $100 gift certificate.
The Writers of the Year were Bill Stanley, Dave Hughes, Donna Ralph, Stephen Rosche and Dianne Perea. The Photographers of the Year were Paul deBerjeois, Jane Rodgers, Doug Rule, Ralph Clark and Amy Fast.
And we recognized Lewis-Palmer graduate Niki Taylor, who wrote the Story of the Year "An Adventure to Remember", a thought-provoking piece about her trip with friends to Costa Rica. The YourHub readers voted for story of the year. Taylor won a new laptop computer.
It was obvious that everyone had fun. It was evident also that YourHub has writers and photographers in the community that are dedicated to making this project work.
I can tell you that the YourHub staff, Scott Prater, Travis Duncan, Kecia Seyb, Michele Sample, Danny Summers and I have worked hard for more than a year to make YourHub go. Rudy Vasquez, our PR/marketing person, and Aaron Linn, our web wizard, have provided incredible assistance along the way. But we could not have done it without the support of many citizens in the community and many more Gazette employees.
When we finally gathered together to celebrate, it was as if we were meeting long-lost family members. I'm pretty sure that good feeling was a product of our teamwork in YourHub's first exploratory year.
It makes the future look bright and exciting because citizen journalism isn't going away. And we're just getting started.
One last thing. We'll soon be posting photos from the event on each YourHub homepage. If you were there and would like to share your pix, please e-mail them to me at
tim.bergsten@coloradosprings.com.