Interview Week: Check out who we've got so far!

With most of our interviews completed (congrats folks!) we're seeing raw copy show up on our assignment reporting pages. Here's a few fascinating excerpts from what's already come in:

Suzanne Batchelor converses with Marlon Blackwell, who created the Porchdog home design for Architecture for Humanity (to be built in Biloxi, MS):

Blackwell: Yes, Architecture for Humanity is the organization. They invited 15 architects to propose prototypes for Biloxi, the only Gulf Coast city that rejected the New Urbanist designs on their city--which I would applaud on a certain level. So, in lieu of that, how about some prototypes? And to solve problems of how to deal with the new FEMA regulations

Batchelor: Did FEMA regulations specify that you design the house 10 feet up?

Blackwell: Houses are having to be built as much as 6, 9 or10 feet off the ground, it varies through the city, by FEMA regulations. How do you maintain some sense of urban or street culture while sitting up in the air?

Andy Sternberg catches Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson in a video interview. Raw footage here at Revver.

John Eischeid asked Di-Ann Eisnor of Palatial a few questions about crowdsourced maps:

John: How easy has it been to work with Google (both the Maps and the Earth applications)? There are a lot of variations on their maps, and people are even working on rendering portions of Berlin in 3D with select interiors. Have you considered enabling something similar?

Di-Ann: "Base maps are not the main thing for us. The main thing is the information people are putting on top of it and how that facilitates community and discovery of the world. Communities of interest have formed around sailing, architecture, parenting and so much more. Working with Google has been great- we could easily start on the aspects of the product we thought were important because of their offering. We also have a partnership with Friendster using Yahoo Maps and have an application running on Virtual Earth. As long as our information can be viewed across the board, that's ideal."

Francine Hardaway chats with Robin Harper of Second Life. Here's Robin on the use of open source for Second Life software:

Another related approach is open source and the open source movement, which we are also doing. Having a team of people who have access to code allows us to fix problems faster, do a better job of web integration, and create custom viewers. It provides an opportunity we couldn't do with our existing team because of resource constraints.

Maurice Cardinal spoke with Debbie Kornmiller of the Arizona Star on handling unruly commenters:

Ms. Kornmiller feels that they had a better handle on “commenting” when they brought the feature back a second time because they were more prepared. Regarding rules and guidelines the second time around, she said, “We tell readers that this is our house and when you come to someone’s house there are standards, whether being polite or kind. We set the standards because it is our house. And if you don’t like the rules of our house go to someone else’s house, or create your own house, but this is what you need in order to live in our house.”

All of us on the Editorial Team are looking forward to hearing from the rest of y'all....and thanks again for your dogged determination in getting these important interviews!