At least the noise around the shareholders meeting has died down now. Of course the announcements of a new publisher and a new editor at USA TODAY were welcome news. More fodder for the Gannett Blog to chew over and endlessly critique.

I am now cautiously optimistic about our ability to turn things around at USAT.

This blog is a place where I will try to convey a sense of what's happening in my little corner of the web product development and management universe. For USA TODAY, I manage the process of defining, building, deploying and supporting products on our website, specifically as it relates to social networking and interactions with our readers. In that role, I constantly evaluate and re-evalute options, "best practices," input from editors and reporters, input from readers and changing priorities in order to try to produce the best features possible.

Frequently, the pace at which change occurs in the news business, combined with changing priorities, layoffs, furloughs and other unavoidable interference, prevents us from doing many of the cool things that we dream up. When this happens it tends to cause lots of pain, but we suck it up and move on. Part of my job is to anticipate those changes and change direction before they get here.

I hope that this blog will pick up a few readers here and there, but these thoughts need elbow room either way, so I'm going to write them down.