A message from Russ Kendall, Director, NPPA Region 11

New Region 11 Web site

It’s hard not to feel somewhat powerless in these crazy, dark times of change and decline. In the best-case scenario our jobs have changed, likely not for the better. In the worst case, we’ve lost our jobs. This malaise affects us all.

Russ Kendall

So much of what’s happening to our jobs and our lives is out of our control, in the hands of people whose shoes probably cost more than what most of us make in a week. The threat of ‘more and worse’ hangs ever over our heads like a Damoclean sword. Remember last year’s call to do more with less? Now it feels as if we’re being asked to do even more with nothing at all.

So what can we do about it?

We can focus on the good work we’re still able to do. We can take pride in conducting ourselves like the professionals we are. We can love and cherish our families and our friends.

We can also communicate better with each other, share job and freelance info, news about the Region, blow off some steam by commiserating with each other over our shared pain. Heck, there might even be some good news to share about awards won, great pictures made, projects completed, trips taken, college degrees earned.

The Region 11 website should be a conduit for frequently updated information to pass back and forth in all directions. It should provide a way for visual journalists in Anchorage to communicate with those in Portland and Seattle and Spokane and Vancouver and Yakima and Bend and every other big and little town in the great Pacific Northwest and beyond. Here in Bellingham, we desperately want to know what’s going on in our region. And there’s stuff we want to share with you.

But how?

To that end, TJ Mullinax, Associate Director of Region 11, Mikael Kjellström, our Webmaster, and I have been working for months on a redesign of this Web site, www.nppa11.org. We wanted to make the site more interesting, more helpful, and more important than before.

Besides including a constantly updated newsfeed, we hope to post the portfolios of the 2008 Region 11 Still and Video Photographers of the Year. We’re thinking about creating a place where people can advertise their unwanted gear as well as a regional “Find a Photographer” service. We hope to create a Region 11 blog. We also plan to create a video library of speakers and workshops. We’re going to be interviewing and writing about Region 11 members, posting video from those interviews.

So please, take a couple minutes to take a quick look around the site. Let me know what you like, what you don’t like, what we need to add and what we need to remove. The new site is not quite ready, and there’s much more to be done, so think of this as a soft launch with all of you as the beta testers.

Together we’re better and stronger. Let’s start the regional conversation.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Russ Kendall
Director, NPPA Region 11
Co-director, Bellingham Visual Journalism Conference
Picture editor, Bellingham Herald
russkendall@aol.com