"When I discovered YouTube, I didn't work for five days. I did nothing. I watched Cookie Monster sing Chocolate Rain about a thousand times." -Michael Scott, The Office

Yep—that about sums up the week of October 13 for me... only I was working and didn't watch the Cookie Monster movie. Not even once.

The Long Tunnel to the Vault
Last Friday our new Video Vault officially went live. The whole thing took off with a bang, considering we began by embedding 153 video clips from our YouTube account into the site. The process was not an easy one. After filming nearly eight hours of footage during the October Boerne Market Days, there were roughly 170 contestant clips to edit into individual videos ranging anywhere between 4 seconds to 3 minutes in length.

As if the editing portion wasn't a big enough load, each individual video then had to be uploaded from my local machine's iMovie software to YouTube. From there, each video was embedded into a distinct page on the Boerne Today site.

You can imagine this process took quite some time. At about video 113, there was finally light at the end of the tunnel.

Vote for your Favorite Market Days Video(s)
So the big fuss about all these videos is the ability we've equipped you with to vote for your favorites (or at least score them with as many stars as you see fit). We've given you the option to rank each video, and it's these rankings that will ultimately reveal the contestant with the most popular joke.

Today (Monday, October 20) we decided we're going to reward that person with an 8GB iPod nano in the color of their choice (given they fit into our very casual Video Winner Agreement).

I also want to bring the 'Featured Video' section in the left-hand column of the Video Vault to your attention. Each day we'll update that column with five of our favorite videos from Market Days. Because we know how time-consuming scimming through 150+ videos may seem, we've added this feature to make sorting through the videos a bit easier.

Candidate Forum Contestant Clips
In addition to the 153 jokes videos, we're also featuring eight clips recorded during the October 15, 2008 Candidate Forum. Last week the Government Affairs Council hosted a candidate forum at Fair Oaks Ranch Golf & Country Club. Eight candidates participated in this forum and we recorded live. You can watch the forum videos in the Video Vault.

Well folks, that's about it for now... hope you're digging the new vault. Let us know if you have any thoughts or suggestions. :)

Bye everyone,