The Idea

The story on why and the idea behind LFT411. (LONG)

The word ‘mobile’ is the cornerstone of this project. It started with me trying to get real time traffic reports for I-10 over the basin. Anyone who has to travel over the basin regularly knows that if anything happens over the basin you can get stuck there for hours.

I wasn’t really having any luck finding this information, especially in a mobile format that I could access from my cell phone. There was the Louisiana DOTD site but it was unusable from my cell phone.

I also noticed that most of the local news outlets (TV and News Paper) were not very timely. Even their websites were lacking and they used the web as just another outlet to post their regular coverage on their schedule. You couple that with the fact that they really only publish the attention grabbing headlines and not all the little things going on around town. Most of these outlets weren’t embracing mobile technology either.

As an IT professional the one thing I know is that people are hungry for information. They want it on their terms, accessible any way possible as soon as possible.

This is apparent with all of the ‘Web 2.0’ technologies and sites out there these days. With the success of things like blogs, IM, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and even Pandora you have to realize that people have a desire to not only consume information but to publish information important to them and their friends or social networks.

I decided that first I would document what it was that I wanted. I came up with the following:

1. Mobile – Want to be able to access information anywhere.
2. Current – Want news and information to be as current as possible.

Once I knew what I wanted the site to do I had to figure out how to accomplish this. Luckily for me the desire to have something that was centered on being ‘mobile’ seemed to foster the whole ‘current’ notion. If someone is mobile, then they are likely out and about. If they are out and about then there is a greater chance of them seeing or hearing about something that would be news worthy. This is especially true for things such as traffic accidents or maybe even something as simple as participating in some event.

How to get current or real-time information was and is the biggest unknown. I assumed I would be able to build or put together a way to accomplish what I wanted as far as technology goes. What I did not know was how I was going to get current information. I knew I couldn’t do it alone since I have a job like most. I knew I couldn’t pay others to do it either. I also knew that if I could pay others to do it I wouldn’t really want to because it would become just like any other media outlet relying on a few select journalists and editors to provide information.

In order for this to be successful I would need to enlist anyone willing to help. Since this is aimed at news and information for Lafayette, Louisiana that meant anyone living or working here should be able to submit information. I also knew that in order to get people to participate the process would have to be very simple for submitting information. If the process isn’t simple it becomes a chore for people, and no one likes chores.

About a month ago I was at a conference in Orlando, FL. and at a couple of the major keynotes they would ask the audience a question and you had to submit your answer via a text message. They also were pushing everyone to use Twitter and follow them. I had heard of Twitter before and even had an account but never really had a reason to use it.

Twitter is all about being social and interactive and having friends or a social network which is not a real interest of mine.

Why did I digress to this point? Well because Twitter became my inspiration for making LFT411 happen.

Twitter helped me to realize the usefulness of a social network if you will. It also made it clear that people like posting random information. They like participating with strangers. They like consuming information. All of these things I had already seen before with sites like “Facebook, MySpace and YouTube” but I didn’t get these basic principles if you will about people.

Twitter also made it clear to me how to get people to participate. Twitter is simple, you can email or txt msg a piece of information under 140 characters and have it published to the web for everyone to see and if people want they can follow you and be alerted to your message via email or txt msg as well.

This was exactly what I wanted for LFT411.