CLT Blog is a Five Ventures finalist | CLT Blog
CLT Blog is a Five Ventures finalist

CLT Blog is a Five Ventures finalist

Posted on 26 Mar 2009 by Justin Ritchie

video: Erik Button; watch this video on Vimeo

Justin Ruckman and I made official appearances as CLT Blog editors in last Thursday’s presentation to the semi-final round of UNC Charlotte’s Five Ventures competition. We were selected as semi-finalists after submitting our executive summary, and prepared the presentation excerpted above for a shot at the finals.

Our eight minute talk contained 81 PowerPoint slides and a ton of information packed into a small amount of time. A huge opportunity for a new approach to journalism is enveloping the community of Charlotte and CLT Blog. Frankly, we are just along for the ride.

Fortunately for us, our judges saw the potential of distributed journalism and we were notified this weekend that CLT Blog is a Five Ventures finalist. Being a finalist means we have a shot at $100,000 along with other business services, and we’ll have the opportunity to review our models and improve our pitch with a small panel of coaches. We couldn’t be more excited about an opportunity to work hard at building a platform that can enable everyone’s ability to share local information.

The video above is heavily edited down from about 13 minutes. Some of our specific plans are excluded due to the sensitive nature of the competition, but we hope to be discussing them at more length soon. Feel free to shoot us any thoughts you have on the presentation. The audio is a little tough to hear when the speaker isn’t looking at the camera; but we weren’t trying to make a fuss with a proper recording setup.

Our hope is to help build a future for community journalism. A future where writers can be fairly compensated and where citizens can be rightfully informed (and entertained).

Comments

  1. Meck 26 Mar 2009 at 7:43 PM

    love your outfits.

  2. Dave 26 Mar 2009 at 8:55 PM

    the videographer should be “laid-off”

    • Erik Button 26 Mar 2009 at 9:47 PM

      Yea, he sucks at video.

  3. Avatar of Justin Ritchie
    Justin Ritchie 26 Mar 2009 at 9:28 PM

    haha, I know what you mean but I can’t blame Erik for this one, he had zero chance to set up his camera before we started talking, he wasn’t even allowed to see the room before the presentation began

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  4. Liz 27 Mar 2009 at 7:26 PM

    NIce work guys! Good luck!

  5. Deanna 30 Mar 2009 at 12:53 PM

    Congratulations guys… I can’t begin to express my excitement about this!

  6. Sabrina Brown 31 Mar 2009 at 3:48 PM

    I’m sure you made a wonderful impression! Congrats!

  7. budesigns 1 Apr 2009 at 1:58 AM

    nice! congrats and good luck!

  8. Seth 3 Apr 2009 at 4:27 PM

    This is excellent! I can’t wait to get started on RDUblog.com