I returned on Monday from five days in sunny (which is to say disgustingly hot) Tucson, Arizona, where I was attending the annual AAN convention, and learning all sorts of things about emerging (and existing) technology, and hashing out the future of alt.weeklies. I also ran for the board of AAN and won (of course, I was unopposed) and now serve as that board's editorial chair (which means I can help shape, hopefully, some of its programming and services in the coming year).
But perhaps the best part of the trip was SFR's showing at the annual awards ceremony. We won four first place awards, the most first places of any paper in our size category (and we tied with LA Weekly, which had the most first place awards in the large paper category).
Firsts were won by Angela Moore for cover design, Richard Borge in illustration, Dave Maass, Ursula Coyote and random Zombie fans for our Halloween Zombie issue (I'll include myself in that, since I did contribute a video) and Dave Maass and staff for our former blog, Swing State of Mind. We also won a third place award for A Qasimi's food writing and an honorable mention for our Devour, Locavore's Guide to Santa Fe issue.