Hello, and welcome to Times Square.

I’m Stephanie Ogilvie, social media editor and primary hostess of our latest blog. [Read more about me here].

What is Times Square — and how are we different from the many lively blogs we already feature on roanoke.com?

Here’s a breakdown of our ambitious plans:

Public square: We see this space as a community gathering place to help you connect with us — and other readers. We envision a bustling, digital public square (which helped inspire the name) — and a place to speak directly with you about why we do what we do.

Cherry pickin’: I frequently suffer from information overload — even navigating all of the stories we offer on roanoke.com every day can be overwhelming. With Times Square, I’ll help direct you to the most popular stories and conversations happening on our website, in our blogs and across social media. In short, I’ll help you find the action. Our editor, Carole Tarrant, likes to think of me as an “information concierge.” How might I be of service?

Want to comment? With our redesigned website (set to launch at the end of January), we’re committed to opening more of our stories to comments. We’ll do that with Times Square. If there isn’t a post already created for a particular story on this blog or another roanoke.com blog, please do suggest opening a comment thread by emailing onlineeditors@roanoke.com. Stay tuned for more about commenting in future posts.

Your contributions welcome: We’ll showcase photos, occasional letters (including our editorial department’s “pick of the day”), and other contributions from readers that might be sprinkled around the website. BTW, here’s how you can submit a photo or news tip.

Meet the newsroom: Yes, we are real people behind the bylines and computer screens. We want to help you connect with our journalists, who depend on you and the rest of the community to do our jobs well. This is the place we’ll share our new hires, where and when you can meet our staff, and some behind-the-scenes moments to help explain the stories behind our stories. BTW, we are retiring our From the Newsroom blog now that we’ll be posting those kind of stories here. Look for occasional updates from these editors and other folks across the company in this space.

Roanoke Times news: We’ll keep you informed about the latest developments across The Roanoke Times/roanoke.com, including job openings, company-sponsored events, contests and new products.

Have fun! I intend to create occasional polls and surveys — even draw on my entertainment/Inside Out background to make the news more playful with trivia, scavenger hunts and other experimental adventures. My creative juices are bubbling — are you game?

We’ll be starting the blog with just a few posts a week, but the pace will pick up once we launch the redesign in January.

Times Square is definitely a work in progress — and we want you to help us improve along the way. So don’t hold back with your ideas, comments and questions. We’re all ears.

P.S. As this blog will continue to be a team effort, I can’t forget to thank the many folks who have helped get it started, including photographer Kyle Green and graphic artist Grant Jedlinsky, who created our cool logo featuring the Roanoke City Market Building; and programmer Mari Stewart, who helped with the technical wizardry.