Every now and then, one of my readers asks me how I manage my time. How do I do all of the things that are required to get the FlashReport up and running each day, and also work at a full time job? (For those readers who have not tuned up by biography page, I work as a Public Information Officer for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.)
This seems like as good a time as any to tell you about how it all works. First and foremost, it simply wouldn’t be possible to do the FR each day if it were not for the fine website development team at Cloudspace, the firm that helped me to "stand-up" this website.
There are really two aspects to updating the FR. The first happens each and every morning. I am 
up at the wee hours (well, 5:45ish or so) and that is when I sift through over 60 webpages looking for relevant items on California politics. As I do this, thanks to the innovative software designed by Cloudspace, when I find stories on these sites, a simple right click on the mouse on that link, and it is "stored" for my use when I am done surfing the web. After selecting the stories, I open a special website where all of the links I have selected are displayed. The cool software already has done some formatting – so if I have a link from the LA Times that says "Governor wins re-election" it will show up in my program as "LAT: Governor wins re-election" (it can tell from the website address what prefix to put). Then I add some titles and/or photos, and easily rearrange the links in the order I want them to show – and press publish! It’s as simple as that.
As for my morning commentary, sometimes I write those the night before (like this one), and sometimes I write them right after I pull together the stories. I use a special program called Constant Contact to send out the e-mail alert — although the timing on that can be misleading. If they are log-jammed with stuff, even though I put through the ‘send order’ at say 7:30 am, you may not get it until 8:30 am or 9:00 am. (Hint, if you get one of these from a "YourInsider@flashreport.org" – it means I had someone else send it.)
As for my attempts to keep the blog site fresh during the day — well, first and foremost, a big thank you to the other contributors to the site. They do most of that! But as for me, sometimes that is a challenge. Remember, I have a full time job that isn’t the FlashReport. Fortunately (or unfortunately, however you look at it), my job in media relations for the O.C. Sheriff’s is anything but "normal hours" — often times the work day starts in the wee hours with early media calls and often times goes well into the evening — especially when we have department events or there is a breaking crime that I am responsible for covering. The good news is that it also gives me some flexibility, as I make no overtime at work. So there is flexibility beyond just a lunch break.
Once again, kudos go to my friends at Cloudspace. Because of them, technology also helps me out — first and foremost, I can actually post to the site from my personal blackberry pager. I also have a great Verizon Wireless card in my personal computer, so I have high speed access which allows me to work on the site while in my car, at a restaurant, or other convenient spots.
Ready for my two biggest secrets? First, sometimes I will write several posts over the weekend, or the evening, and then they are ready to post up on the site. This then allows me to just send a quick email from my blackberry and the post goes up, or I can call one of my site contributors with access and they will move it from draft to final. There are also times when I have something I want posted, and it just isn’t convenient for me to do it (because of work or whatever) — I can fire off a quick call on my personal phone to a colleague or my developers with the essence of what I want said, and they will write and post for me – as far as you can tell, I penned it myself. Pretty cool eh?
Oh, there are occasions when my FlashReport hobby takes me away from work – whether that be leaving early a State GOP Convention, or like last week, when I went to the State Capitol for two days. That’s when I get to use vacation time from work, which I am happy to do for this great website!
I should probably add, since this is a convenient time to do so, that I also am very good about taking vacation time if I do anything political in a day, and I am not putting in at least eight hours that day on top of that.
Anyways, this is just a little insight into the crazy world of managing one’s life when one has a full time job, and tries to run a website. You may ask yourself if it is too much of a pain in the posterior? No way! I love what I do! I hope you do, too.
Have a great day!
Jon
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