So it’s almost here. We’re leaving Wednesday night for Youth Specialites’ National Youth Worker’s Convention in Pittsburgh. Every year we gather a team from The Bridge and head out to one of the three conventions for a long weekend of training, encouragement, and rest in order to recharge or batteries as we prepare for another year of working with the kids in our program. It’s an amazing event.

This year is a little different for me because I have the privilege of helping YS do some new stuff while there. They tried, for the first time, liveblogging their Sacramento convention earlier this month, and it seems to have been a huge success. Well, during the Pittsburgh convention, I will be part of the liveblogging team helping to cover the event. Think of it as a real-time conversation somewhere between Twitter and a full-fledged blog, with an up-to-date stream of what’s happening that those at home can follow along with. The liveblog host, CoverItNow.com also supports photo and video uploads into the stream.

You’ll be able to follow the liveblog stream at http://nywc.com/live.

I’ll be joining an entourage of fine and talented bloggers from across the country. I don’t actually know who else will be covering the event, but trust me, they are youth workers of the highest quality and caliber.

My goal for the weekend is to also update my own blog, conveniently located right here in this very location, every day, or almost every day. In addition I will, as I have always done, take an obscene amount of photographs. I’d also like to take a lot of HD video there and put together a daily, or semi-daily recap of what is going on… maybe even a convention video when all is said and done. It really depends on how much time I have and where I am located in proximity to the action. And how quickly I can get the high-quality content out. I do also have my Flip Video camera for super quick film to upload, most likely while liveblogging.

Anyway, the convention starts on Thursday (for those taking a Critical Concern Course), of which I am one. We leave Elizabeth at 6pm Wednesday to make the 7-hour trek across Pennsylvania.

More to come soon.