I wrote an essay about Baltimore’s jazz saxophone tradition that appears in a new release: Music at the Crossroads, a book published by Loyola University’s Apprentice House press.

After several years of service as the newsletter editor for the Baltimore Jazz Alliance, it was a privilege  to return to Baltimore with the chance to write something weightier. Thanks go to BJA president and book editor Mark Osteen, and to all my sources who shared their time: Andy Ennis, Gary Bartz, Whit Williams, Craig Alston, Ellery Eskelin and Rosa Pryor.

The book was released May 16 at the Eubie Blake Jazz Center, and will be available for purchase on Amazon.com in a week or so–this post will be updated with the link.

Per the volume’s back cover:  The first book to analyze and celebrate Baltimore’s underappreciated jazz tradition, Music at the Crossroads shines new light on legends such as Eubie Blake and Cab Calloway, honors neglected figures such as Ellis Larkins, Hank Levy, and Ethel Ennis, pays tribute to the legacies of Pennsylvania Avenue and the Left Bank Jazz Society, and analyzes the current Baltimore jazz scene.

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Not many places offer the kinds of unbridled spectacles found at ROFL Con II. Exhibit A: the G4 reporter fawning over costumed freaks rubbing the belly of a man dressed as a cat. Dominant conference meme: cats. Seen also in the shot below (Exhibit B) of folks at the keynote.

RT @haiknus Twisted minds meeting// under bent Gehry strata.// A high tide of geeks. http://roflcon.org #roflcon #haiku

The architecture at MIT, where ROFLCon was held, was pretty cool, especially the crazy Frank Gehry-designed building they’ve got.

For the conference keynote, the Berkman Center’s Ethan Zuckerman and Microsoft’s Danah Boyd literally climbed up  and sprawled out on the presenters’ table. They spent the next hour trying to reconcile their heavy day jobs (studying fun) with the point of the conference (having fun).

Right off the bat, Zuckerman labeled himself and other Berkmanites as outsiders.

“You know that no matter how good you are or how much you know about this, you’re never going to create the wonder and mystery of Keyboard Cat,” Zuckerman said.

Berkman academics ran many of the panels and ran ‘em well, but when pedantic questions and themes were introduced, the panelists were as unsettled as keyboard cats in a roomful of rocking chairs.  For the most part it wasn’t a hospitable venue for noggin-scratchers or actionable intelligence.  It was all about the lols.

While I was in no frame of mind to engage with ROFLCon II on a cerebral or journalistic level, someone I met at ROFL Con did so quite well.  That person was Annie’s friend Benjamen Walker, who recorded an excellent episode of his WFMU show, “Too Much Information,” my new favorite show.

Here’s my less polished take on ROFLCon.

Charlie Schmidt, owner of the original keyboard cat: “When somebody says, ‘Maybe you can be famous,’ you go for it!’”

Case in point: I met David After Dentist and his dad, who described himself as “managing our small empire.”  Interesting David After Dentist stats, current as of May 2010: 58,224,166 views on Youtube. $125,000 approx. earned by Youtube monetization, licensing and endorsements like Vodafone.

Super Art Fight was sweet. Tough to describe, but if you look at the picture below you’ll get it.  Depicted here are two artists facing off via artwork, ninjas v. robots.

I got to see a pretty cool panel with the Autotune the News and @FakeAPStylebook. Turns out Autotune turned CNN down for a show or recurring segment. Also dug a conversation between The Onion’s @baratunde Thurston and Stuff White People Like’s Christian Lander.  Baratunde recommends Trendistic for Twitter analytics.

“Racism is for the internet and homophobia is for Xbox Live,” Lander said. “Three seconds on modern warfare, and it all comes out….”

RT @eliotter  Autotune the news real band plug at #roflcon : The Gregory Brothers, http://ow.ly/1FMom

Then there were the things I hadn’t seen before, or fully appreciated until now.  The meme breeding-ground 4Chan.org. Youshouldhaveseenthis.com. This sweet Downfall video.

After the Con, I did get in some new media networking by going to Boston Media Makers, a breakfast group of web people. Met @stevegarfield, vlogger extraordinaire and a fellow Twitter haiku writer, and Nelson de Witt (@dewittn), who was separated from his family in the Salvadorian Civil War, and then was reunited with them in 1997. His adopted mother is working on a book about their story and he was there to find out about how to market it.

RT @haiknus Don’t drink the water// Aquapocalyptic times// call for strong coffee. #bmm http://haiknus.com/h20 /http://haiknus.com/bmm

For further ROFL coverage including transcripts and more, check out the official site.

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April 17: Investigative Reporters and Editors conference at Philadelphia Inquirer
April 24: BarCamp News Innovation in Philadelphia
April 30-May 1: ROFL Con II in Boston

As an authentic dork, I’ve been taking notes and business cards the whole time. After I get back from Boston, I’ll write a blog entry on the best of what I saw.

But for right now, I’m posting a liveblog I wrote in 2008 for Jeff Jarvis’s CUNY Graduate School of Journalism News Innovation conference. The liveblog covers a session on potential business models for public support of news.

It’s two years old, but had some cool participants including Jay Rosen of NYU, NPR’s Adam Davidson and David Folkenflik, Richard Tofel of ProPublica, David Westphal of USC Annenberg and David Cohn of Spot.Us.

The link: 2008 Live Blog of Public Support session at CUNY’s News Innovation conference

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It’s streaky: I can work for weeks on a string of stories without good video opportunities that mesh with my schedule. But then there are opportunities like last weekend, when I shot two videos one day, edited them the next, and felt like a professional VJ.

One video, about a barbershop quartet competition, goes with a story of mine, and the second accompanies stories a colleague wrote–one about open tryouts for the Somerset Patriots, a quasi-minor-league baseball team, the other about his tryout.

Both of these videos clock in at about 3 minutes, and involve more storytelling and character development than my early NJ.com videos.

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Link to the review at New York Press here.

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I’m excited to dabble in music writing again on the web for NYPress, one of NYC’s bigger alt-weeklies.  First up was Wayne Krantz, a musician I can barely describe,  so it should be easy from here on out. Picture is mine.

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There are other episodes that can be found by searching for “The Goods” on Inc.com, but this was my favorite.

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