More Content
The first thing I looked at on the Website is where I can add more content. An obvious spot was the main page, where I had one really bad paragraph that told nothing. I replaced that with a couple paragraphs about why preservation of baseball sites is important, and the complete quote that I bookended my conference presentation with in Gettysburg to emphasize the point further.
It also was recommended to me that I add an about me page, a lot of websites have them and they are a good way to know that the creator is legit. So I wrote up some stuff about me and my interests as it pertains to this project, some other background things like my National Park Service work, and linked the StoryMap again as well as these blog posts. hopefully that helps people take me seriously, not that they wouldn’t but it may show that my interest in the subject means I know something.
I also wanted to add pictures to the website so that it looks like something worth visiting. On the top menu, the only thing that actually had visual appeal was the StoryMap, so I wanted to fix that. I wanted to make it a more personal touch, so I used only pictures that either I or one of my parents took when going to baseball games or other places on various trips we have been on. It took a while to find the best options, I had to call my parents to see if they had some from years ago that were on an external drive back home, but I eventually got one for each page. I like how it turned out, I did have to play with WordPress to figure out how to make the picture visible, but even that was pretty intuitive and I gained something from it in terms of my knowledge of website building.
Podcast Recording Prep Work
Since this is a podcasting project, I do want to do podcasting too. My guest host for the next episode was once again busy when I was available to record, so I used the time I would have spent doing that fleshing out the outline for that episode a little more, which mostly involved polishing and clarifying a couple things in the notes, and fleshing out the outline for Episode 3 a lot more. Episode 2 is going to be the Preservation Overview to go with the baseball one that has been published. Episode 3 is where I am going to talk about baseball stadiums in various movies. While looking for things to talk about with that, I realized there are some movies that pertain to baseball but don’t actually use professional stadiums. Where do those sandlots and little league fields fit into preservation? I am definitely going to brush that in this episode, but it could be a topic for another one down the road, talking about community fields all the way up to the glamourous Little League World Series complex in Williamsport, PA.
I found movies where stadiums on my StoryMap were talked about to start the research process for this one, but then brought in some more modern stadiums later as a compare and contrast. I am also interested to look at cookie cutter stadiums to see how they are seen, and how they can fit into preservation. That could be yet another full episode too though. I have a lot of possible content for this episode, now I need to make it flow nicely in an outline that I can understand while recording.
Presentation Prep (Part 2)
The last thing I worked on this most recent stretch was the materials for Research and Creativity Day, which is coming up later in the month. I have to present for this fellowship, but I probably would anyway because its such a cool project and I want to share it with as many people as possible.
The first step to getting to present at Research and Creativity Day is writing an abstract, and luckily I wrote a few possible abstracts for the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference that I combined for the final product, but I kept the original drafts so I can use those as a guide for my abstract for this. I picked the one that talks less about the Negro Leagues and more about baseball overall, since this phase of the project is bringing all of the things I have found about the Negro Leagues into the context of the rest of the baseball world. I am making a few changes to it to fit the scope of what this phase of the project is covering, so hopefully it winds up being good and catching people’s attention. It is a challenge to make it concise and still make sense, but I got some practice with that preparing for MAAC, so I feel confident I can do it.
The different thing about this one is that I am building a presentation off of my research materials and not so much off a paper. I did build my paper for MAAC off of the StoryMap, so I know it is possible, but it will be a slightly different approach that I am going to have to play with a little bit. I think rather than having it about the content, I am going to talk about the process and journey of the project and what I have learned through that about different tools I have tried to use. This phase of the project has been the most informative to me in learning new systems, so I think that is a good thing to have included in it. I am still going to have a lot of baseball content, as that is the point of the project and that is what I want people to take away. I will have a link to the website at the end of the presentation to allow people to access more content if they want to.
Next Steps
I don’t really have many new things to do. I am going to find a time to record episode two this round. This will happen. If it doesn’t happen, that is not ideal. So it needs to happen. Otherwise I am scheduled to record an interview for the DKC Creators podcast this week, so that should be fun, and I will be finishing up prep for Research and Creativity Day. Simple, easy (Schedule alignment permitting), and fun, until next time, wish me luck!