Help Laurie Go Gold!

A tech-hip sports fan from Portland goes for blog gold at the Winter Olympics

By Margie Boule, The Oregonian

November 24, 2009, 12:42AM

Call her a long shot. Or a dark horse. Use any sports metaphor you like. 

Laurie Matthews won't mind. She loves sports. 

She also loves to write. And she loves to travel. 

That's why this contest is perfect for her, Laurie's friends tell her. She has a blog. She loves sports. She's a photographer. 

It may be fate. If Laurie wins this contest -- and as of this week she's one of five semifinalists -- she'll become a blogger behind the scenes at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., in February. 

The contest is sponsored by Microsoft; the winner gets an all-expenses-paid trip to the Olympics and a press pass. 

Laurie found out about the contest from a friend, who encouraged her to enter. 

It's a contest for people who love sports and who write blogs, have Flickr photo accounts and send "tweets" via Twitter. Laurie fit the bill on all accounts. 

She's plugged into all this high-tech communication because she wanted to keep in touch with friends across the country, she says. 

"I grew up in Portland, but I've moved around a lot," she says. Most recently she lived in Boston, where she worked for the National Park Service at the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation. Laurie is a landscape architect who specializes in historic preservation. 

After moving back to Oregon two years ago, she thought it would be hard to keep in touch with everybody in Boston. "What you'd usually talk about over beer at a Red Sox game" wouldn't necessarily get discussed in a long-distance call. 

"We're 3,000 miles away now. I had to find a new way to share things." 

A friend had recently gone to Chile on a fellowship; she'd started a blog that Laurie followed. "On a daily basis I could see what she was doing. It was a great way to stay connected." 

So, when she moved back to Portland, Laurie started a blog (http://laurie-thelongwayaround.blogspot.com). Since she has a day job, she wrote her blog on the side. "It was going to be a one-year experiment," she says, to talk about the transition between cities. 

"Moving back to Portland after 10 years, things had changed a lot. I had a unique perspective to see how Portland had changed, how it's better." 

She's still writing, after two years. 

She also started a photo experiment with a friend in Boston at Flickr.com. Almost every day Laurie and her friend take one photo in their respective cities and post them together in an account they call westeast1245. "Twelve is the number of my favorite Red Sox player," Laurie says, "and 45 is the number of her favorite." 

She joined Twitter to keep that same kind of daily communication going with others. "If they aren't in your daily life, friends can fade away. Friends are really important to me. I don't want that to happen." 

When a Portland friend told Laurie about the Microsoft Olympics blogging contest, Laurie had all the qualifications. 

She entered the contest. 

"I thought, gosh, what are the chances? One in a million? And then I got a call: 'You're a semi-finalist.' " 

Laurie has checked out the competition. "I've been intrigued to read the blogs of the other semifinalists. It's great to see how people express themselves." 

She also realized that several of her competitors are professional bloggers. Many have a wide following, whereas Laurie's blog readers have been limited to friends. 

She could use some votes. 

"I think I could give another perspective," she says. She loves all sports -- some of her competitors follow only one sport -- and has followed the Olympics for years. 

When she worked in advertising years ago, the agency specialized in kayaking. She got to know Olympic kayakers who spent years living in trailers. "They lived to train. They gave everything to their sport. 

"Every four years they would represent our country and do amazing things and everyone would cheer for them. But it was the three years in between that was intriguing to me." 

In a similar vein, Laurie says that if she should win, she would blog about what the Olympic experience is like behind the scenes. "The back story: What people are eating. What are the hot tickets? What will you not see through the eyes of the major networks? What's it like living and breathing amongst the athletes and the people supporting them?" 

To vote for Laurie, go to www.officewintergames.com. 

"So few people ever have access to behind-the-scenes at the Olympics," Laurie says. "I know I can communicate what it feels like to people. And give to people who can't go the opportunity to feel the excitement and the intrigue that goes along with being at an international event." 

-- Margie Boulé