Next!

My grade for The City Maven was posted earlier this week, which means the school part of this endeavor is officially over. In the unlikely event that anyone checked TheCityMaven.com today, this is what greeted visitors in place of the site that was up last week:

I thought it would be a little more interesting than the typical maintenance page with that annoying ticker counting down the days until the site relaunches. Yes, I said relaunches.

I have given a handful of City Maven presentations over the past three weeks, and one of the harsher comments I received was this:

“All you have to offer is you used to work there, you’re nice and you bake chocolate chip cookies.”

Good point, buddy!

Excuse me, what I meant to say is that I couldn’t agree with you more.

It has been pointed out to me several times that no one has yet found a way to turn online news or hyperlocal news into a successful business venture. True enough. I’ve also been asking for confidence in the project based upon assumptions, projections and my sparkling personality, none of which you can take to the bank.

Before I ask anyone else to take a chance on The City Maven, I need to do one very important thing: I need to take a chance on The City Maven.

So that’s what I’m doing. Over the next month, I’m going to retool the site, reestablish relationships with my old contacts and sources, build up a library of searchable public documents, and figure out what I can do as a one-man-band.

Then, I’m going to pack up Lola and move back to Los Angeles. I'm gonna go it alone and run this publication.

In the meantime, I am happily taking suggestions on:

• Story ideas
• Web design
• New contacts
• A bungalow located near a mountain or an ocean

The possibility of failure is hardly enough to stop me from pursuing something that is terrifying and awesome all at once.