DFM Chat on election year initiatives

Hello! Members of the Digital First Media and everyone else who wants to - are going to be taking part on the weekly Twitter chat at noon.

Today we're talking about, well Election-year story initiatives.
The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.

If you want to chime in, just post a tweet with the hashtag "#dfmchat" so it can automatically appear below, or post a comment in the field at the bottom of the chat box.

Election Day planning

I'm using my blog to test a new and faster way to publish election results. Here are some of the things we're planning to do at the Freeman:

We've created (still working on completion, so bear with us if there's stuff missing still) a spreadsheet that will constantly update election results as they come in. Here's a preview, with empty results, obviously.

All you have to do is hit refresh every now and then. But how do you know when results are in, right? For that, we'll have a CoverItLive container, with all the people at the Freeman who are working on Election Day stories, pretty much all of us. The best part is that CoverItLive allows YOU to chime in. I'll be moderating that as well, to include relevant comments and questions.

In addition, we're including a SeeClickFix Election Problems report widget on our site so that you can tell everyone if there is a problem at the polls. We'll be monitoring those as well.

Let me know what you think, what we can do better, or any other ideas you might have. And don't forget to vote on Tuesday.

Otherwise, the terrorists win.

How to make an Election Day problems widget with See Click Fix

Visit http://seeclickfix.com/widget

At bottom, click on “Generate Map Widget Now!”

Add your desired location. (600 for JRC sites or 600 for this blog, for instance). Make sure you select “Report Form” on “Make a primary tab”

Add your contact info.

Click "generate widget", get your code and post in your site.

As I was told by my managing editor, "it's so easy, even an editor can do it." It should look like this:





The best part? You can share it with your blogger networks and everyone else. A true crowdsourced effort. What do you think?

Election planning

This document was updated constantly during yesterday's primary elections

Basically, all you would have had to do to get new result was hit refresh.

The document is an iframe (think of a window) of the Ulster County Board of Elections site.

I don't think you can get live results faster than this.

What do you think about doing something like this for the general election?