Behind-the-scenes video from Business Leaders of the Year taping

In March, Mainebiz chooses three executives as our Business Leaders of the Year, writing profiles of them and their work in our print issue. This year, we decided to take things to the next level and do short videos on each one, pulling out one aspect of their impact to highlight.

The videos took a lot of coordination, since we wanted to not only include the business leader, but a couple of his or her employees or colleagues, and we wanted to shoot on location. The team who worked on the videos spent a few hours on site with each business leader to capture what we needed.

For our video on Michael Tarpinian, CEO of the nonprofit Opportunity Alliance, the team shot at a preschool program run by PROP, which recently became a part of Opportunity Alliance. The team's presence made quite an impact on the 3- to 5-year-olds there. Our editorial assistant/videographer, Travis Bernier, even got out from behind the camera to read them a story.

You can watch the final video of Michael Tarpinian here.

We hit the road to Bangor

For the second year in a row, we're holding an On the Road with Mainebiz series of events, traveling to various locations around the state to meet and greet. There's food, a cash bar and a chance to mingle with members of the business community. For the editorial team, these events are prime opportunities to talk to business people and get story ideas. Prior to each networking event, we also convene a panel of Mainebiz readers to get some feedback on our print publication, primarily, but also our online offerings.

On Wednesday, Editor Carol Coultas, Senior Writer Randy Billings and I traveled up to Bangor for the first On the Road event of the year. It wasn't the easiest of commutes. Around Bowdoinham, we ran into that butter truck accident, and an apparently outdated GPS device took Carol and me to Veazie. Instead of arriving at the Hollywood Casino on Main Street in Bangor, we ended up at railroad-track crossing in Veazie, deserted except for a couple rusted-out trucks. Better luck next time?

Randy, a Bangor-area native who made the wise decision to take his own car, made it to the casino but didn't press his luck at the new table games.

Instead, he checked in on the progress of the $65 million arena under construction, which an impact study says would generate $26 million in new revenue in Penobscot County every year. Paul Bunyon is hard at work on it.

We also learned that Bangorians (Bangorites?) love their wings.

At our reader roundtable, we plied participants with cookies and coffee and asked them about their news-reading habits, what they read most in the pages of Mainebiz and what we could be covering better. That's Carol and Randy on the right.

Cynthia Smith, president of Angel Secure Networks in Orono, takes some notes during the roundtable discussion.

Despite the glorious weather (we spotted a temperature sign that said 87 degrees!), the reception brought out more than 100 people. We did some networking and again kept our ears open to story ideas, since Carol charged us with coming back with at least two ideas and a stack of business cards.

A business card exchange...

Getting story ideas...

A reporter's work is never done.

After the event wrapped up, we hit the road back down to the Portland area, but not before stopping at Red Robin in Augusta for a late dinner -- and an onion ring tower.

We had our weekly meeting this afternoon to talk about our story ideas, some of which I'm sure you'll see in the pages of Mainebiz in the next couple of months.

Our next On the Road event happens April 25 in Sanford. I'll be updating my GPS before then...