One of our group goals as the Community Development team here at ESPN.com is to be a productive member of the global community of developers.

Each member of the team is a habitual social networking user with a deep love for the latest and greatest technology used to build and innovate the best web sites on the internet.

We're doing a number of things in our effort to contribute back to the community, including starting this blog, and one of the other main aspects of our effort is attending technology conferences. There are a slew of conferences happening all the time and though we can't make it to as many as we'd like, we did manage to make it out to our first a short couple of weeks ago. We were fortunate to have a fun and interesting one take place in nearby Hollywood at the Community Next event Next Generation: Media and the Web.

The one day event took place a couple of weeks ago now but we thought it would be a good idea to still give a little round up of our experience there.

The event featured some of the most well known sites on the social landscape and some that even we've never heard of so there was a good cross section of speakers and sponsors.

Here's a list of some of the sites that were represented: MySpace, Gaia, Songza, Geni, Warner Bros Records, Pandora (blog), The Hype Machine, YouTube, Scoble, Mashable, Reddit, 8020 Publishing, Veronica Belmont, Meebo, Playboy U.

None of us here have been regular conference goers so we didn't know really what to expect from the event. We were stoked to find out it was a very casual affair with a lot of cool people in attendance. The food was good and the schwag the sponsors were giving away was pretty good to boot!

We, all three of us, took in the event in shifts though there was a good couple of hours or so when we were all there together. I took the early shift since I love breakfast the most and got to listen to some interesting talks and presentations before I had to take off for a previously planned engagement. I'm a huge music lover so I got the most out of Aza Raskin's presentation about his songerize site. I never knew about the site prior but have since checked it out and now count it in my repertoire of music consumption. Two other peeps that were part of the Music/Radio discussion represented their sites which I had heard of before included Pandora and The Hype Machine. Though I hadn't checked either out in a while, it was cool to hear what they were up to and get their thoughts on what's happening in the ever changing world of music and how the dynamics of the internet are changing the way we as music lovers get and listen to music.

There's some great video that was taken at the event up on Stickam and there are a slew of photos uploaded on Flickr that are tagged with communitynext.

We're looking forward to attending many more conferences as we grow as a group and get the word out about what we're working on here at ESPN.

ESPN HQ in Bristol has 3 primary attributes: piercing cold, intimidating geese, and employees. Instead of covering my intense experiences with the former two, I'd like to talk about the latter and the cordiality and friendliness of the ESPN.com team. During my time in Bristol I met literally tens of people - many of whom I'd interviewed with the better part of a year ago. Some were famous (lookin at you Skip Bayless). Some were not (lookin at you Pat Alreth). Regardless, however, of their notoriety I definitely have a keener sense of how the .com group fits together as whole, including how .com fits under its parent group WDIG.

I met the majority of the staff of two major groups in Bristol: fantasy and the main site. After talking with Jaime Stella and Dave Weiner - the respective managers of these groups - and the producers and engineers they oversee I determined several points of integration with each. With the main site we could do a better job of promoting widgets, perhaps displaying actual widgets on index pages or adding a widget tab to player cards. With fantasy we should investigate the creation of an open social application so that users could display their fantasy sports data (rosters, results, etc.) on their favorite social networking sites.

Perhaps more important than all of that was my introduction to the glory, majesty, and brutality of Gator. Gator is a miracle. Created by Norse monks in the 12th century, it's a game that combines the best of soccer and handball in a chaotic and incomprehensible melee replete with bruised shins, pulled groins, and Cody throwdowns. Highlights include APs frisbee-sized bruise, my first Gator goal - a no-look, fake pass, leaping toss of epic might, and Schmidty admitting he's moving to Alabama. Roll Tide!

In conclusion,

Make way for geese.

I've set up countless WordPress blogs in my time.

The entire process took me about 30 minutes when I set up my first one a couple years back. And each time, through experience and code improvements, it was easier.

Until this time.

The difference was that this is an actual ESPN blog, created and maintained by actual ESPN employees.

The difference between a company blog and a personal blog is huge, especially, considering ESPN has never had a public-facing blog run by employees.

So, what will we write about here? I don't know. Pretty much anything related to sports, the Internet or working for ESPN.

A better question is what we won't write about here.

We won't cover any secrets. Sure, we'll talk about products we're working and are getting ready to launch, but we're not going to give away competitive advantages.

We'll also steer clear of any legal issues that have to do with ESPN that could potentially affect the company.

We won't flatly criticize ESPN. Think about it. When we criticize the company, we are criticizing SOMEONE or multiple someones we work with. It's just not cool to criticize a coworker in a public forum. If we want to talk about work done outside of this group, we'll try to interview the person or people responsible for the work and present their insight here.

We are developers and Internet fanatics who want to share our experiences and thoughts with The Community.

More specifically, we're Rails developers and Web 2.0 junkies. Oh, we're huge sports fans, too. So mostly, we'll be sticking to talking about our dealings with each and try to give you a feel for what it's like to work for ESPN.