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Marginalia: a blog

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Marginalia: a blog

Yoo hoo! Queensland Theatre Bloggers … where are you?

I’m spending some of my time designing a new site that will, I hope, act as an aggregator for Queensland theatre – and I mean Queensland, not just Brisbane. Can you hear my ‘regional’ voice shouting from the hill here?

I went nuts recently chasing down reviews for a current show in Brisbane. Google’s fine, but I thought- wouldn’t it be nice if there were one site that could gather all the news and reviews in to one place? I got to sketching out my ideal site; it would include live RSS blog feeds like the great Popurls site, provide links to theatre groups and companies, give voice to guest bloggers and interviews from time to time,  kick along some comment, and generally be a one-stop for things-theatrical with a focus on Queensland. I’ve got a first draft listing of the professional companies and the independents, as well as some of the amateur companies in the state. I’ve got the venues, the supporting organisations … there’s a wee problem though!

It seems there aren’t too many bloggers out there providing a voice on the news and reviews of the work being done around the state. We’ve got Tonya Turner’s Standing Room Only out of the Courier-Mail and Katherine Lyall-Watson for OurBrisbane.com with the ‘Performing Arts Blog.’ Here they are in a live RSS feed. Where are the rest of you? Who have I missed?

Most of the big papers don’t have dedicated arts blogs on their sites, and whilst they might be leading the way, the street papers’ feeds are permanently down it would seem. Australian Stage‘s RSS feed is borked. It’s great this technology when it works, and I did try. Sheesh!

Standing Room Only: Tonya Turner

Performing Arts Blog: Katherine Lyall-Watson

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2 Comments
    • Andrew Eglinton
      Aug 14, 2009 at 12:40 AM /

      Looking forward to seeing the result. Will you be using rssinclude.com to power the new Queensland site? Or is it a case of wait and see?
      .-= Andrew Eglinton´s last blog ..Practical Guide to Theatre & Web 2.0 =-.

    • Kate Foy
      Aug 14, 2009 at 8:09 AM /

      Andrew, right now a case of wait and see. I’m using RSS Include right now as a means to an end – testing, testing. I have the Popurls clone theme which will house the new site eventually. Speaking of which – it’s starting to look interesting, though I am spoiled by the flexibility of Thesis theme which I use. Popurls Clone has nowhere near the ease of backend use that Thesis has, but I continue. Actually, given the nature of the site, I suspect it will remain a ‘vanilla plain’ site i.e., a functional and serviceable rather than overly smart-looking spot. This is a design issue of course. I’ve also noticed that most companies and groups have websites, but as I say, far fewer actually maintain blogs. Perhaps this is the next stage in the development of Web 2.0 comms for theatres – or, as I rather suspect, they’d love to maintain a blog but actually don’t have/don’t see the point of allocating the resources needed to extend their profile.

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