It has now been a week and a day since we started our joint experiment with the 603 Alliance in doing our 4-day broadcastapalooza deep in the heart of the liberal media from the DoubleTree hotel in Manchester. So now that I’ve had a chance to catch my breath, a couple of thoughts:
- It was a LOT of work and we couldn’t have pulled it off without the 603 Alliance (Diane, Fran, Jim, and Steve) and other Groksters that showed up (Mike, Don, Jim and Steve (yes, the last three are part of both organizations) as well as John Irish helping out a lot with the audio.
- While we supplied a lot of the commentary and the equipment, it was a lot of work by the 603 Alliance folks that pulled the schedule together and did a lot of ad hoc / on the fly when “timings” didn’t quite match up the way “the plan” started off. Excellent guests and I’ll be rolling out some of the video over the next few weeks. Steve is already starting to rollout audio of the phone-ins.
- We had FUN !
- It was exhausting – I got there around 6:30 – 7am every morning driving down from the Lakes Region (about a 2.5 hour round trip) and leaving early to late evening.
- Not everything went right technically – and again, thanks to John Irish for helping out. However, reports from a few that watch online said that both the audio and video were spot on – clear and without much interruptions when we were broadcasting. We did have a couple of burps with the Livestream.com server end, and we did learn that some cellphones didn’t work well with our cellphone to sound board adapter.
- Hotel staff were helpful and understanding with the physical plant – we ended up with a bit more room than we thought and when we had a noise level problem with the Radio Row folks next door, they fixed it (took a while, but it got fixed).
- Food was expensive at the hotel (no big surprise there) but good. In fact, quite good.
- My wallet thanks the 603 Alliance for including in our deal for having validated parking!
- This was the longest stretch that I had been “out of the house” in over a decade as I did/do most everything via the ‘Net. First time since we’ve had The Grandson with us – different as I missed putting him to bed a couple of nights – very strange and a bit sad on missing out on something I consider important. And again I thank TMEW (The Most Esteemed Wife) for letting me do all this.
- I learned a few things and I’ll be incorporating them into our next foray in making our equipment configurations even more flexible. I know now that transitioning to a larger, new configuration with our mobile rack system won’t meet all of the needs – there will be times where smaller WILL be better.
Most of all, I wanted to say thanks, again, for all of you readers that made it possible for us to do that. Not only with the financial support (below) without which we WOULDN’T have been able to do this, but to all of you who watch and stopped by to say hello. It is always nice to see friendly faces and hear friendly voices. All of us, GraniteGrok and 603 Alliance, agree that it was a success and we’re looking to do it again.
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BUMPED and UPDATE: I wanted to take a moment to say “THANK YOU” to all of you who donated to GraniteGrok for this event as exactly $700. That is enough (plus a bit) to cover our expenses including getting some gear that we’ll need. Once again, our Grok readers are the BEST and we thank you for your loyalty.
GraniteGrok, once again, is turning to you, our loyal readers for a bit of financial help. You see, Feb 11 is the date for the Presidential Primary here in NH for both the Democrat and Republican Parties. Given that the Republican primary is pretty much a lock, most of the “energy” is on the Progressive Left.
The DoubleTree Hotel on Elm Street in Manchester will be once again Primary Central. Normally what happens, in addition to all of the political operators, campaign workers, and candidates, journalists of all stripes show up.
Including broadcast types, which means…
Radio Row – which this year will be mostly made up of Left of Center groups like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, a multitude of others. All broadcasting with mobile setups.
We aim to be there – and if we are the lone outpost of Conservative ideas broadcasting audio and video during the days leading up to the primary. While we are starting to set up a schedule of Conservative talkers for interviews, I’m betting that perhaps the more daring of the Left may wish to come in and cross swords with us politically; we will take all comers! Also, given the news that the Trump campaign may be holding a rally that Monday may mean that some of those folks may be passing through as well – we’ll try to grab them too!
Here’s the deal – this ain’t free. We are joining up with the 603 Alliance to set this up but we need a bit of fund to help. The hotel has made it clear that we have to sign a contract for a minimum of four days which means Sat, Sun, Mon, and Tues. For the price of $300/day, we get a 10X10 space – along with lots of other groups in the room. A dedicated Ethernet line to the Internet is more. And I’m going to have to get a bit of specialized gear so we can “squish” our equipment footprint down to fit as well as not having to pay more for a dedicated phone line (e.g., for cellphone Bluetooth adapters to tap into our soundboard/mixer. Let’s not forget insurance to cover the equipment during the overnights (even if the room is locked there are times that stuff grows legs). All are unanticipated costs that were unplanned.
Right now, we are planning of doing an extended version of “GrokTALK!” along with other segments.
So, we’re asking for a bit of help. We’ve got a good track record in making a little go along way – like when you folks helped us out with finishing the redo of this website (aka “Grok 3.0”). Steve has periodically put up GrokRankings to help let you know what your donations did; here’s another way to say it:
That rapid uptick? Yeah, you made that happen. And this month is looking to be our best month ever. Our trailing one year page view is either 1.82 million (Google Analytics) or 2.5 million (WordPress).
If you would like to see us take on the Progressives in their own arena, please click on the DONATE button at the top of the page. Any monies collected will go to this project. If there is a surplus, well, we’ll use it for the next GrokMeetup in mid-February – no cover fee if at all possible! Or our next project!
