PDD Shop Talk

Monthly Grovel: June 2020 Edition

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As society pushes ahead with some small in-person events mixed in with the ongoing virtual stuff, the PDD Calendar continues to report on the happenings.

Once a month we reach out with a beggarly blog post to remind everyone that human beings and not machines are at work editing and publishing calendar events on Perfect Duluth Day. So if you appreciate it, drop a few bucks in the PayPal account, yo. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: May 2020 Edition

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The PDD Calendar continues to soldier on through the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping you informed about virtual events and things that might or might not happen in the fuzzy future.

Once a month we reach out with a beggarly blog post to remind everyone that human beings and not machines are at work editing and publishing calendar events on Perfect Duluth Day. So if you appreciate it, drop a few bucks in the PayPal account, yo. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: April 2020 COVID-19 Edition

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Typically Perfect Duluth Day’s monthly pitch for donations brags about how many events we publish on the PDD Calendar and notes all the labor required to do it. In the past three weeks, however, most of that work has shifted to marking events “cancelled” or “postponed.” We are still publishing new events, but most of them are either “virtual” events happening online, or concerts and neighborhood celebrations planned several months into the future. So our mission continues, but it’s a much lamer mission, at least for the short term.

Why do we need your help now more than ever? Because when life gets cancelled the advertising revenue that keeps Perfect Duluth Day in business slowly disappears. Nearly every enterprise in town is struggling in these challenging times. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: March 2020 Edition

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In the past year — from March 2019 through February 2020 — the PDD Calendar published 8,064 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, improv classes and lutefisk dinners. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: February 2020 Edition

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In the past year — from February 2019 through January 2020 — the PDD Calendar published 8,040 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, cooking classes and snowball fights. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: January 2020 Edition

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In the past year — from January through December 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 7,937 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, improv nights and snowshoe hikes. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: December 2019 Edition

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In the past year — from December 2018 through November 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 8,022 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, book sales and lutefisk dinners. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: November 2019 Edition

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In the past year — from November 2018 through October 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 7,960 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, bunco tournaments and lutefisk dinners. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: October 2019 Edition

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In the past year — from October 2018 through September 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 7,971 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, cake walks and bunco tournaments. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: September 2019 Edition

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In the past year — from September 2018 through August 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 7,917 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, bake sales and bunco tournaments. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: August 2019 Edition

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In the past year — from August 2018 through July 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 7,883 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, seminars and stilt-walking classes. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Chris Godsey on Pressroom Podcast

Pressroom Podcast: Breaking down patterns of violence with writer Chris Godsey - Duluth News Tribune | News, weather, and sports from Duluth, Minnesota This week we have with us a writer who caught a wide audience with his recent Saturday Essay “Why Some Men Kill Women” on Perfect Duluth Day. duluthnewstribune.com

Episode #186 of the Duluth News Tribune’s Pressroom Podcast features Chris Godsey, whose recent essay on Perfect Duluth Day, “Why Some Men Kill Women,” examined men’s violence against women. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: July 2019 Edition

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In the past year — from July 2018 through June 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 8,045 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, seminars and cornhole tournaments. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Perfect Duluth Day NE IPA

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen had a toothpaste. The World Wrestling Federation had ice cream bars. Now Perfect Duluth Day has a beer. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: June 2019 Edition

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In the past year — from June 2018 through May 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 8,016 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed. We intend to keep up the good work, but (believe it or not) we could do better. There are still events we are missing. And we have a few assistants standing by who jump into action when donations roll in to pay for their future carpal tunnel surgeries.

So that’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: So many events, so little time

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In the past year — from May 2018 through April 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 7,925 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed. We intend to keep up the good work, but (believe it or not) we could do better. There are still events we are missing. And we have a few assistants standing by who jump into action when donations roll in to pay for their future carpal tunnel surgeries.

So that’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Homegrown photo banners

Once again, we’re looking for Homegrown Music Festival photo banners to rotate at the top of pages on Perfect Duluth Day. Photos of bands, friends, events or general shenanigans. Keep in mind, the photos get cropped to extreme horizontal proportions. If you want to crop ’em yourself (1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high) and send them, super dooper. Or you can send them uncropped and I’ll do my best to make them fit.

Click here for complete submission guidelines, but the basics are: 1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high, e-mail them to banners@perfectduluthday.com. We’ll get them in the rotation during the Homegrown Music Festival, starting this weekend. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: Bonus tip about PDD Calendar map view

Before delving into this month’s pitch for donations to keep the PDD Calendar chugging along, we’re taking a moment to offer a little tip on a different way to use it.

There are numerous ways to sort, filter, view and search events on the PDD Calendar. By default the calendar shows a list view in chronological order. That’s obviously the best way to look at what’s happening in the moment and scroll to the future. But there are three other view options — day, map and photo. We’ve never taken time to explain that before, because it’s always seemed obvious to us that list view is the best option. But our traffic statistics are starting to show more and more people using map view, so perhaps it’s time to mention it. (more…)

Saturday Essay and Selective Focus Programming Note

Like a bunch of old timers stuck in some newspaper-era, schedule-oriented, deadline-consumed mindset, the brain trust at Perfect Duluth has been locked for several years in the notion that every Friday we need to publish our Selective Focus feature and every Saturday we need to publish our Saturday Essay. No more. It was fine for a while, but we’re done with that rigid scheduling. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: Time to tip your servers

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It takes a lot of geek hours to keep this website going strong. So once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Mayor Larson knows a perfect Duluth day when she sees one

Minneapolis Southwest Journal: “Klobuchar launches 2020 campaign from Boom Island

A parade of local Democratic officials emphasized that grit as they took turns at the podium in the lead-up Klobuchar’s speech. That included a trio of Minnesota mayors: Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, Johnathan Judd of Moorhead and Duluth Mayor Emily Larson, who described the weather conditions — temperatures in the teens under falling snow — as “a perfect Duluth day.”

Also, from WDIO-TV Eyewitness News: “Klobuchar appears on Good Morning America

One of the supporters who spoke at the announcement was Emily Larson, mayor of Duluth. “We call this a perfect Duluth Day! Or spring, or summer,” Larson joked with the large crowd.

Monthly Grovel: PDD Calendar holds out its hand again

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An important message from Perfect Duluth Day’s Redundant Department of Redundancy:

It takes a lot of geek hours to keep this website going strong. So once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)

Duluth’s Best Website

In 2011 Perfect Duluth Day chose as its official slogan “Duluth’s Duluthiest Website.” It was a statement we felt pretty confident making. Maybe other Duluth websites are better, but certainly none are Duluthier.

But this week we’ve been wondering if PDD truly is Duluth’s best website. This line of thinking was prompted by the Duluth Reader weekly newspaper conducting a poll and ultimately publishing in its Jan. 31 “Best of the Northland” issue that PDD won the title of “Best Local Website.” (more…)

Ten Years of Perfect Duluth Day on WordPress

Hunkered down at PDD World Headquarters, problem solving the switch to WordPress in 2009: Cory Fechner, Scott Lunt, Paul Lundgren and Barrett Chase.

Ten years ago — Jan. 30, 2009 — Perfect Duluth Day made the big leap to the WordPress publishing platform. Specifically, the upgrade was from Movable Type version 3.2 to WordPress version 2.8. These days PDD is on WordPress version 4.9.9. But enough nerdspeak. (more…)

Monthly Grovel: PDD Calendar accepting donations

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Happy 2019, Perfect Duluth Day readers! It’s been almost ten years since PDD began selling sidebar advertising to support the development of the content you read here, and it’s been more than seven years since the PDD Calendar was launched. Over those spans of time, two things have become abundantly clear: 1) There is a strong demand for the content on PDD. 2) Advertising revenue doesn’t come close to paying for the human resources necessary to produce it.

So back in September we quietly put a donation bar on the page where event organizers submit PDD Calendar listings. Bits of funding began trickling in … $5 here, $30 there … and it’s been a big help. Now we’re reaching out to readers. (more…)