omn turns two! our second year in review.

Today marks two years to the day since Oregon Music News went live in 2009. It’s been an eventful year full growth and growing pains (a recent server move stagnated us for a couple of days), but a dedicated crew of OMNers has kept us afloat and flourishing through the trials and tribulations, chaos and triumphs.

As the story goes, the writers are now navigating the ship (or inmates running the asylum) as several key contributors stepped up to fill new roles, in addition to their normal written duties, during the last year. We’d like to recognize the efforts of Ana Ammann as Publisher, Mark Niemann-Ross as Tech Guru (aka Media Strategist), Alaya Wyndham-Price as Director of Business Development, Brandon Ellison as Social Media Specialist, Alex Jones as Associate Editor, Jessica Black as Promotions Manager, and Annette Zuzio as Production Director (who we will miss dearly as she recently moved to LA).

The days, weeks and months flew by, especially as we tackled numerous festivals during the summer months, accompanied by a slew of regular contributors. Our ridiculously talented and supportive team of photographers, writers and organizers allow OMN to publish fresh, local content on a daily basis–hardly a day passes without a new feature story, concert review, or piece of news. Just take a look at the homepage on any given day to see a swath of names covering a variety of genres and events across Oregon and the NW–some 8,000+ posts have been published in our first two years! From Classical to Metal to Family to the unclassifiable yet quintessentially understood, in Portland at least, Melting Pot, we cover it all in an attempt to comprehensively blanket the scene in Oregon.

We’ve also tried to build and support our community, sponsoring events like the Portland Jazz Festival, Mississippi Street Fair, Reel Music Festival, Silverton Wine & Jazz Festival, Soul’d Out and more, and we’ll continue to do so in the coming year.

We look forward to evolving technologically, capitalizing on mobile publishing opportunities, which we initiated this summer with two mobile, festival websites. Spearheaded by Mark Niemann-Ross and photographer/writer Kevin Tomanka, OMN went mobile with festival sites for the Waterfront Blues Festival and PDX Pop Now!, and we look to continue this success with future, local festivals.

As our readers, we’d also like to thank you for all your support, feedback and interaction here on OMN plus via Facebook and Twitter. (Psst… if you don’t already, like us! Follow us!) And we hope to see you all tonight at our free 2nd birthday party in the ballroom at The Secret Society. Doors open at 7pm with the Renato Caranto Project kicking it off with some fat, funky sax at 7:30pm followed by electronic alchemist Auditory Sculpture with collaborators (trumpeter Derek Sims and female vocalists Orianna Herrman of Oracle and Stephanie Schneiderman), and indie folkers Sunbeam closing it out.

Get more on the artists playing our party plus listen to a few songs in the opening minutes of KZME 107.1 FM’s Trixie Pop show (sound bite starts at 3:15) from last Thursday (and download the podcast here):

Thanks for all your visits.

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Read some our favorite stories from year two on OMN.