Our last full day in Louisiana was spent taking an hour and a half drive down to New Orleans to meet a professor who urges students to work collaboratively and tap their innate ability to use and adapt technology to their entrepreneurial ventures.
Doctor Ralph Maurer, who now teaches at Tulane University, taught a management innovation class this past spring at Louisiana State University.
Maurer had two students this past spring develop platforms for an iPhone application and rising artists through a website called ireptheboot.com.
After we left New Orleans, we met the creator of ireptheboot.com, Kyle Bashay. Bashay said people like to network with like-minded individuals and his site give these artists a common ground. Bashay said that without the Internet, his venture would not be possible.
Tomorrow we have one last interview scheduled before we hit the road for a seven-hour drive back to Dallas, TX so we can catch our flight back to Syracuse, NY.
Well, it’s been nine days since we started calling Baton Rouge home and now we’re just about to pack up and leave on Friday.
First it was hard getting used to the area. As a fellow News21-er put it, you’re in a new place trying to adapt your routines of home to a place you hardly know.
Now it’s hard thinking about leaving, especially when you think about all the people we’ve meet and all the stories we’ve heard. And trust me everyone has one, some the same, some very different and heartbreaking.
Today was no different with the exception that for the first time since we arrived, we felt like we belonged.
Wednesday started and ended with great conversation.
In the morning we met up with Chris Normand, who is going to be a senior at Louisiana State University in the fall. Chris was working at KLSU deejaying the morning to afternoon shift. Chris, if you haven’t been keeping up with our blog, is trying to create an iPhone application that interacts with you the minute you walk into a store or business.
He took a class this past semester that gave him the platform to think innovatively and tap the intelligence of his electronically adapt mind.
Tomorrow we’re driving down to New Orleans to meet with his professor Doctor Ralph Maurer to find out more about the class and how he was able to create a learning environment that fostered this kind of thinking.
From there we meet City Councilman Chandler Loupe. It was there where I realized the world works in mysterious ways. The planets align and it brings like-minded people together.
When we arrived, we were greeted not only by Councilman Loupe, but also by a team of people transforming a local school, the Dunham School, into a digital learning environment where every student gets a laptop from Apple.
Next fall, the school will adapt itself to this new learning environment and create a classroom of collaboration with an emphasis on teamwork and learning.
In the evening, Courtnee and I realized just how homesick one gets when working on the road. Being away from home, you forget the feeling of being in a place that’s lived-in and filled with the comforts of home.
Luckily, we were reminded of what it’s like to be home. We were invited into the home of Saiward Pharr, who works with the NPR station. She whipped us up a nice home cooked meal, which tasted better than any item from the menu of a fast food chain or a dinner special from a fancy restaurant filled with strangers.
As we said our good-byes, Saiward made sure we could take a little piece of “home”. She sent us off with a Tupperware filled with homemade brownies (recipe courtesy of Pillsbury).
Those little pieces of “home” didn’t last long. Courtnee is finishing them all as we speak. Oh well, maybe that’s what you need when you’re away from home; a sweet treat from a new friend in a foreign place.
Sometimes it’s the strangers you meet and get to know that make being away from home not so bad at all.
One of our first nights here in Baton Rouge was spent downtown at a Live After Five concert, where we interviewed 50 people about how they’d use technology to rebuild the world.
One of the couples we interviewed actually got engaged later that night, with a romantic proposal on stage and everything! Racquel and I were surprised to find out that the couple had actually reunited after many years on Facebook. That got us thinking about whether parents and their kids use social networking sites differently. So we decided to interview the woman who got engaged and her 17-year-old daughter.
Racquel and I discovered that the mother and daughter had different uses for the internet and social networking sites. For Bridget, the mother, social networking sites are a way to reconnect with old friends, while her daughter uses MySpace to maintain her current relationships.
I think there are days you’ll remember forever. For me, yesterday was one of those days.
Racquel and I spent the morning with Mrs. Destiny Cooper and her student, Leroy. The four of us loaded into her car and together we toured various parts of the city; from the well-manicured lawns in the shadows of extravagant houses to the less desirable parts of town where children pedaled past homes with boarded up windows. We saw it all.
“You know you’re in a black part of town when the city bus passes through your neighborhood,” said Leroy, as he pointed out the areas all too familiar to him.
It didn’t take long for us to see how quickly the quality of life changes as you drive through Baton Rouge.
“We’ve only gone about a tenth of a mile and look at the difference already,” said Destiny Cooper.
During our tour we also experienced the infamous Baton Rouge traffic that we’ve been hearing so much about, bumper to bumper cars made it difficult to get around the city. While steering around a wreck that was on the side of the road, Destiny Cooper said a 15 minute drive can often take twice as long.
We took a break from the tour and the traffic to pick up lunch from Tony’s Seafood.
Racquel had been eager to try crawfish. So she, Mrs. Cooper and Leroy bought a least ten pounds of the tiny, red creatures. Personally, I can’t handle food that still has eyeballs, so I passed and went for catfish…you can’t ever go wrong with that.
Leroy guided us to a local park where he and Mrs. Cooper taught Racquel some “crawfish etiquette.” In my opinion, it’s hard to imagine any form of etiquette when you’re ripping off a little creature’s tail and sucking out the meat and juices.
Post-lunch, Racquel and I interviewed Leroy, Brittany, and other students who’d been in Mrs. Cooper’s creative writing class. These students saw a monorail as a solution to not only transportation problems, but also to crime and the community divide they believe exists in their community.
A perfect example of how technology, when applied the right way, may be able to rebuild the world, or in this case, the city of Baton Rouge.
Tomorrow begins our non-stop video shoots with people we’ve meet over the past week that we have been here. We have back-to-back appointments until we leave Friday morning for our drive back to Dallas, TX to catch our flight back to Syracuse.
On Tuesday, we’re meeting back up with Leroy, Brittany from McKinley High School and with some of their other classmates. They’re going to take us around town and show us the parts of town that inspired their poem. A poem filled with pain, hope and the yearning for technology to change and rebuild their city: Baton Rouge.
We wanted to show you just how passionate these students were about the need for change, so here are some snippets from their poem:
A false sense of confidence kept me from dangers during my adolescence.
But as I got older I bump into unknown strangers and drunk homeless people who begged me for change to spare their lives.
25-cents could buy me my very own piece of cardboard that would be illustrated “HOMELESS” or “WILL WORK FOR FOOD”….
“There is no place like home,” Alice would say, as I bop my Converse to the same rhythm she did and say the same exact words except nothing happened.
Life wasn’t a fairytale or a dream.
But I wish it was. So I could have eagle wings with a registered halo and fly away from hell.
Where it consists of shotgun houses, graffiti-infected buildings, dead folk sleeping on the sidewalks as cars pass kids playing Ring-Around the-Rosie enjoying the horrible aroma it produces.
The solution? Technology that could build a monorail throughout their city.
Well, we weren’t on the highway but a few minutes towards Gonzales when it started raining cats and dogs. The sky turned a dark, dreary grey and the rain pummeled our windshield, definitely reducing our visibility. So I did what any smart college graduate would do-I called my mother over in Rockwall, Texas to see if she could check the weather for us online. (Thanks, Tam!). After getting the all clear, Racquel and I continued on our way to the Jambalaya Festival. Gonzales, Louisiana, the home of the festival, is just about 20 minutes away from Baton Rouge…so it didn’t take us too long to get there.
As we arrived in Gonzales, we had to resist the temptation to stop at the Outlet Malls…poor Racquel, she really wanted to stop. She did, however, pull into a parking lot where we asked for directions to the festival, and where we also had our first encounter with the friendly people of Gonzales. Instead of just giving us the “usual” directions, a local woman dropped what she was doing to lead us straight to the festival grounds. Again, southern hospitality is thriving here in Louisiana.
We KNEW when we got to the festival. The smoky smell of burning wood led our noses straight to the action. There, we saw almost 30 teams cookin’ up their own secret Jambalaya recipes. Large metal pots contained bubbling broth mixed with special seasonings and pork, chicken, and sausage. All the right ingredients to make anyone’s mouth water. We got to know Steve Broussard and how he developed his passion for making a southern favorite. Watch him and his brother, Mike, in our photo essay.
After Jumbalaya 101, it was time to see how Gonzales folks would respond to our “50 people, 1 question”. We heard a variety of answers and we’ll share them with you in July. The tables were turned, however, when a local publisher/writer snapped a photo of us beside our cameras. Mike Strong promised us that we’d be in the next issue of Ascension Magazine and we’re going to hold him to it!
Thanks to a lot of outgoing personalities, Racquel and I were able to complete our task in two shakes of a lamb’s tail (a southern sayin’ meaning “quickly”). We obviously couldn’t leave without some traditional fare. Racquel sampled some of that delicious jambalaya while I definitely went for the extra-long corn dog, slathered in mustard, a Texas-sized dill pickle, some tasty cotton candy and a tall lemonade to wash it all down. I’m obviously not embarrassed to show I can eat my weight in food. There were also some great southern rock bands playing, we’ll add some video of that too.
Overall, we had a great time out in Gonzalez, and we’re ready to call it a night. Goodnight!
Baton Rouge is chock full of culture. The sights, sounds, and even the tastes (as we hope to try a bit more of today) are very different from anywhere else in the country. So we decided that in order to report about the people within Baton Rouge, we’d need to see what makes the South so special and unique. Friday we blogged about our evening at Live After Five, where a zydeco band had the locals showing off their dancing skills. Now we’re about to check out another southern favorite-jambalaya. There’s a festival going on nearby and we can’t wait to share our latest adventure with you. Check back with us tonight.
After four days of immersing ourselves in Baton Rouge, we decided that today would be our “day of rest”.
We started the day cleaning our hotel room. There is only so much room to walk around when it is packed with tons of technical equipment and two weeks worth of clothes, especially when you are traveling with Courtnee. She packs for all four seasons and for about six months worth of clothes.
Courtnee said that on our day of rest we should, or rather I should, experience some good ol’ southern cooking. So we headed to a restaurant we saw during our exploration of Baton Rouge in the earlier days. Frank’s Restaurant was the place on Airline Expressway.
The minute you walked into the restaurant the smell of fried food made your mouth water. Courtnee instructed me what to order and trust me, we ordered a lot. From fried pickles to fried jalapeno poppers to fried catfish to french fries, I think after today I’ve had my quota of fried food. But Courtnee said she was ready for seconds.
From there we walked off our southern comfort food at the Mall of Louisiana and ended up bumping into one of the employees at our hotel.
But today, there was some work amongst the play. We got in touch with the professor of the LSU student who was creating an iPhone application. Looks like we’re headed to New Orleans where he lives. Don’t feel too sorry for us. Sometimes what we do feels too good to be work. I
“Let the good times roll.” That’s pretty much what we did today here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We started out our day with a ton of phone calls, trying to make more connections with folks in the city. Racquel chatted with Saiward Pharr, who works in the news department at WRKF 89.3, the local NPR radio station.
After our morning of phone calls, we headed to LSU’s campus to talk with Chris Normand. Normand, an engineering student, is trying to develop an iPhone application. In talking to him, he said young people have a lot of great ideas, but that the younger generation has a harder time executing them. We made plans to meet up with him next Wednesday, when we plan to catch him in action as he deejays on KLSU, the campus radio station.
On our way to and from finding Chris on the LSU campus, Racquel and I got a reality check on just how hot it can get here in Baton Rouge. Pretty, stinkin’ hot. Walking through campus was an experience as we scurried from tree to tree to stay in the shade. Total giveaway that we are out-of-towners…as well as the fact that Racquel has a distinctive New York accent (Sorry Racquel, that’s too bad…Good thing I have a slight southern accent to balance us out).
Then around four this afternoon we grabbed a bite to eat at a recommended pizza shop called “Schlittz and Giggles” (no, you just can’t make a name like that up). I felt like a movie star because Racquel was a little zealous with her photo-taking. Lucky for us, Saiward Pharr joined us for a slice and good conversation. She gave us the ins and outs of Baton Rouge, a huge help when you’re coming to a city that you barely know. Thanks again, Saiward!
After dinner, it was time to take in the sounds of Louisiana. We headed to Galvez Plaza for Live After Five, where a cajun band, “Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys” were jammin’ out. The atmosphere was intoxicating, everybody, and we mean EVERYBODY was having a good time and dancing. Couples, both young and old, twirled around the dance floor while mothers bounced to the beat with their babies on their hips. Others just sat and slightly swayed to the music while tapping their feet to the beat. So it was obviously a fabulous place to ask 50 people all the same question; “How would you use technology to rebuild the world?”.
All of you Baton Rouge natives had some really great responses, some different, yet all the same message. One big theme we noticed was the need and desire for an improvement in transportation into and out of the city. Racquel and I had so much fun getting to know everyone. The smiles were contagious and we truly felt welcomed. What a great way to spend a day here in Baton Rouge. Thanks y’all!
We’ll be sure to upload videos and pictures tomorrow!
Today has been a very fun and full day. Racquel and I headed back to McKinley High School around 7:15 this morning-after battling some pretty intense Baton Rouge morning traffic. At McKinley, we went straight to Ms. Middlebrook’s 10th grade social studies class. With the help of Ms. Cooper, we encouraged the class to share their worries, concerns and problems that they have with Baton Rouge. Responses ranged from crime to standardized testing, transportation to insufficient funding for art and music programs. It was moving to hear some of the more personal stories that the teens shared with us. After hearing their concerns, we then asked them how they could solve those problems using technology. Plenty of great ideas floated throughout the room, and Racquel and I were able to capture some great footage of the discussion.
We also got to meet Brittany and Leroy for the first time today. Both seemed very enthusiastic about sharing their work and we were able to get a clean recording of their “slam” poem. Leroy and Brittany are definitely talented, their words and voices were so powerful…Racquel and I are both excited to spend more time with them later this week.
After a long but productive day, we grabbed a bite to eat at a Filipino restaurant. It was my first time trying these type of dishes, so Racquel ordered for us. It was delicious! During our meal, we also started sharing our purpose in Baton Rouge with the owner, JoJo. He and his staff seemed very interested in News21 and invited us to come back over the weekend to meet other folks and teens in the area!