Tuesday, 6/25

I think I'll stretch the envelope one way, if not the other.

Two weeks from tomorrow I have the first Jim Koski ™ walking tour of the summer for the Marquette Regional History Center. This one's called “...And Put Up A Parking Lot”, and I've been doing all kinds of research for it, including writing a Mining Journal article that'll show up in the newspaper next week. In putting it together I've think I'll be able to try one thing new this time around.

But not the two I was hoping for.

If you've ever been on one of these walking tours you know it's me and 200 of my closet friends, wandering around Marquette and looking at things. I always try to put what I'm talking about in context, which means that I always like to show pictures, either of what I'm talking about or what used to be there. However, when you're on a downtown street with 200 of your closest friends, sometimes not everyone has the chance to look at the pictures.

And that's a bummer, especially on a tour where I'm talking about the buildings that used to sit in the parking lots where we'll be standing. And since I've come up with a few rare pictures of buildings that turned into parking lots, like this one--

(By the way, you know what that building is, and which parking lot now occupies the land? I'll gave you until tomorrow to figure it out. I'll write about it a little then.)

I want to make sure everyone has the chance to see them. So for this tour, I'm gonna be trying out a high-tech version of allowing people to see the pictures. I'll be putting them on a website, and then anyone on the tour who wants to use their phone or tablet can access the site, and see the picture I'm discussing. I'll still be showing the pictures by hand like I usually, do, but I also figured this might be an interesting way for more people to see the pictures, especially right as I'm discussing them.

We'll have to see how it turns out. I'm hoping it turns out well, at at least enables a few more people to see the pictures. We'll see.

The other new thing I was thinking of trying? Well, there always seems to be a group of people who can't make a tour because of schedule conflicts, and another group that can't make it because they're not in Marquette. So I was toying with the idea of doing the tour on Facebook Live; while the tour is actually going on, I'd have someone hold up a phone and stream the entire thing out on the History Center's Facebook page. People could then watch it at their leisure. I couldn't quite set that up for this tour, but maybe we'll try it again sometime in the future.

After all, I do have that walking tour of South Marquette coming up in August.

First things first, though. We'll have to see how picture website works out for “Parking Lot”, and if it does work like I hope, then I'll have another way to information out while acting in my role as the Pied Piper of downtown Marquette.

(jim@wmqt.com)