Hi. Patrick Beeson SimpsonI’m Patrick Bee­son.

And I’m a new guest blog­ger for Knox­ify.

(Thanks for the invi­ta­tion Casey!)

It’s always dif­fi­cult writ­ing about your­self, espe­cially as an intro­duc­tion on a blog, so I’m going to switch to ques­tion and answer mode:

What is your name and age?

Patrick Bee­son. And I’m 27 years old.

How long have you been in Knoxville? What part of town do you live in?

My fiance, Lind­say Durango, and I moved to Knoxville in late Feb­ru­ary of 2007. We cur­rently reside in the Cedar Bluff area.

Though I’ve never lived in Knoxville before now, I did grow up in Bris­tol, which is about a two-hour drive to the north east cor­ner of the state.

Y’all might have heard about the Bris­tol Motor Speed­way…

Where do you work?

I am a project man­ager at E. W. Scripps Inter­ac­tive News­pa­per Group. For ref­er­ence, Scripps owns the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Blount Today, Halls Shopper-News and Metro Pulse.

What will you be blog­ging about?

I plan to write about my expe­ri­ences in Knoxville as a 20-something pro­fes­sional. But I’ll also mean­der to top­ics of per­sonal inter­est includ­ing: cycling, media and inter­est­ing consumables.

Tell me more about your background…

Like many kids that grew up in a small town, I fled after grad­u­at­ing high school.

Only I went a bit fur­ther than most, land­ing in Durango, Colo. at Fort Lewis College.

I trans­ferred back east after my fresh­man year because the school was a lit­tle too small. The last three years of col­lege were spent at Appalachian State Uni­ver­sity in Boone, N.C. where I grad­u­ated with a major in pub­lic relations.

I did a few PR intern­ships in non-profit and agency set­tings before decid­ing to head back to school to focus on writ­ing and the media.

And then I was deliv­ered to Tuscaloosa, Ala. and the Uni­ver­sity of Alabama (Roll-Tide). Please don’t hate me UT fans!

I chose to ditch the nor­mal course of study for jour­nal­ism grad stu­dents, and purse a self-rolled path of online media. My Master’s project even dealt with blogging!

Two years after arriv­ing in the Deep South, I left with degree in hand to Roanoke, Va. and The Roanoke Times/roanoke.com. I began as an intern and left as Web Stan­dards Devel­oper, and expe­ri­ence in one of the most inno­v­a­tive news­rooms in the coun­try for online media.

What other inter­ests do you have?

I am a cycling fanatic — I have been since my first moun­tain bike expe­ri­ence when I was 15. I cur­rently have three bikes, not includ­ing Lindsay’s bike, which share space with my camp­ing equip­ment and a snow­board. Oh, and two cats: Simian and Tita.

I’m also very skilled in design­ing and devel­op­ing Web sites.

These two top­ics in addi­tion to my pas­sion for the media are all fod­der for blog­ging on my Web site: patrickbeeson.com.

How can you be reached?

I can be con­tacted in a vari­ety of ways: