Hola DASCorps!This is my update for the past month or so...

1. Formed an excellent partnership with the Southwest Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. Encantada TV (the new public access channel)was THE TV media sponsor. With that partnership Encantada TV had an ad before every single feature film at the various venues, logo on their website and inside their program. What we did in return was, I filmed the Film Festival. Went to 3 different parties to shoot interviews and get b-roll footage for the "Here & Queer:Voice from the Southwest Gay & Lesbian Film Festival" movie. I also go to interview cult icon Mink Stole and Jane Wiedlin, from The Go's Go's, haha, that was fun. I also had to go and meet with location sites to get release forms signed. By going over to 100 Gold Loft to get Rick Rennie to sign off on the release form, we had positive communication about working together in the future with filming Flamenco Dancers (who ideally will do performances at the space 50 days/yr).

2. Worked on spreading the word about the 10/10 city council meeting. I sent out info to various media outlets, organizations and producers.

3. Mike, Amelia and i met to discuss details and preparation for upcoming fundraiser events. Same day met with Jamal Davis, Manager of Casa Vieja, to arrange their donations for the QUQ Fundraiser Gala at our station. Jamal said he will work with his fellow friends, who own various indep restaurants in ABQ to also sponsor food donations. Meeting with Jamal on 10/26 to follow up with progress. Looking to possibly tap into his resources with Marble Brewery and to host our "after party" at Marble Brewery

4. Contated UNM-Dept. of Communication & Journalism (John Oetzel). Asked if C & J Dept. would be interested in having some of their students host a weekly news program @ our station on E-TV

5. Contated UNM-Caroline Orcutt (Program Supervisor,Digital Arts / Macintosh Training, UNM Continuing Education) “This sounds like an excellent opportunity for our students. I can forward your information to our advanced and graduated students and our film instructors, and I can post it in our employment/events book. Would you like me to do that? We could also possibly make it a goal for one or more of our more advanced film classes.”

6.Contacted UNM-Department of Cinematic Arts, Jenn Griggs,Administrative Assistant (P) 505-277-6262. “This sounds like a wonderful opportunity for our students. I can hang fliers (pdf / images / text is fine) and also announce with on our listserv (text only). I will also forward this on to the faculty so they may tell their students as well, and they may email you with questions.”

7. Contacted a few local organizations about doing cross-promotional trades. Some of these trades would be to work with local stores and organizations to give QUQ producers a discount at their store, in exchange for promotional space on our many services (Video Bulletin Board, newsletter, website, PSA).

8. Worked on a quick and dirty fundraiser event. @ events were organized-TGIFridays & Fuddruckers. Contacted TGIFridays-Contacted GM and QUQ is hosting 3 different fundraiser events called “Benefit Night.” Everyone who goes to eat on the assigned dates and times, will have 20% of the proceeds go to QUQ for its moving expenses. Fudruckers-Contacted GM and QUQ is hosting 3 different fundraiser events called “Benefit Night.” Everyone who goes to eat on the assigned dates and times, will have 20% of the proceeds go to QUQ for its moving expenses.

9. Contacted Public Academy for Performing Arts-Sue Hudson—Submit films from students of performances, dance all filmed at NHCC. PAPA received a NM Arts Grant and would like to use that grant for a series on Encantada TV. Sue is also a filmmaker and her film won at the NM State Fair and is interested in submitting it to E-TV.

10. Had a meeting with KUNM (local NPR affiliate)—Contacted Roberta Rael, Youth Radio & Richard Towne (GM) regarding cross-promotional services.Youth radio: mission is to empower youth through radio—tackling various social issues. Ways we decided to collaborate were: (1) To build a training model of KUNM-document youth radio processes and create a training video. (2) Film Youth Radio @ KUNM-This will be a mutually beneficial partnership, as Encantada TV will receive local programming and Youth Radio will learn more skills (being on TV) and cross-promote KUNM. This will show how youth are developing skill sets, inspiring various community members to pursue video production and for QUQ producers/staff to learn /pursue radio production.

11. KUNM: Discussed with Richard Towne, GM, ways we can cross-promote our mediums. There are about 3 different local radio segments QUQ staff (Erica and Colleen?) will film to be later broadcasted on E-TV. There is a live call-in show, 8am every Thursday, a weekly Music Showcase, “Ear to the Ground,” highlights local NM musicians, playing songs and interviews. We will further discuss logistics with Tristan, Programming Coord., to spell out our production set-up and getting the approval from hosts and guests to film them.

12. Continued and finshed the "Here & Queer" dvd! Will go on Encantada TV and our community media space, hosted by Miro Community!!!

13. Worked on marketing the "Benefit Night" fundraisers being help at T.G.I.Friday and Fuddruckers. Sent out mass email via facil promoting the events & encouraging people to go out to these restaurants as up to 20% of the proceeds go to Quote Unquote for our moving expenses. Sent the info to the ABQ Journal, Alibi, KOB & KOAT online community event section on their website, and circulated it around to other organizations (SVEDC, MACCS, etc) to spread the word.

Comment from Mira Allen on October 27, 2009 - 1:09pm

Is it green chile roasting time there? I miss that smell. Stoked to see how much cross promotional stuff you're doing:)

Whoops, it's been a while since I've done one of these things. So my car was unable to pass smog and I'm currently trying to get the guy who sold it to me to give me my money back and he's dodging my calls. Thankfully my boss knows someone in Marin (where I got it) who used to do lemon law stuff and now does legal aid, so hopefully she can put the fear of God in him. But now I have a moped, which is exciting and insurance is only $9 a month, so you can't beat that.

Project-wise things are still in early stages yet. I'm looking at applications to hire a programmer for one of our sites (californiavoices.org if you know anyone who's good at Ruby on Rails and wants a low paying job you can send them my way). And moving the rest of them around so that they all are on joomla instead of a mix of random CMSes.

It seems like up until this point there hasn't been much standardization in the way they do web things. Everything is in different languages, hosted by different people in different places. So it's a little crazy making, but I'm slowly trying to pull everything together.

Thankfully I haven't had the food stamps issues a lot of people seem to be. Other than my mail seems to be super super slow so I got a letter the other day saying that because I hadn't turned something in they were going to cut me off, but when I called they said they'd gotten the paper work.

Comment from John Dorman on October 27, 2009 - 10:55am

Colleen, I have a friend who is good at Ruby on Rails..she sometimes takes projects as a freelancer. email me if you want more info: essfilms@gmail.com

-John

Friends of Trees, a nonprofit in Portland, Ore., plants trees. That's really the whole enchilada, as they say.

While the mission is simple, the path is complex and has grown to 15 full-time employees, a bunch of trucks, thousands of volunteers and 375,000 trees planted in the past two decades.

These are the stories I have been trying to capture on my organizational blog, Growth Rings, the past two months.

While I still have a lot of work to do, I can proudly say we've created the greatest nonprofit tree-planting blog west of the Popeye's Chicken and Biscuit across the street.

If any DAS corps members are in town Nov. 15, Friends of Trees is having an anniversary party and you are welcome to attend, as long as you RSVP and pretend to love trees.

Talk to you soon,

Toshio Suzuki
503-282-8846 ext. 16
www.FriendsofTrees.org/GrowthRings

(I must apologize for the late field report. It hadn't occurred to me that October is halfway over!)

Well, September and this first half of October have been filled with minor victories and lots of frustration. Time has been flying, and I'd like it to slow down and let me catch up.

In addition to my main project, I've been doing some other minor work for my organization. After some tedious database updates, I was able to see the fruits of my labor with more clicks on a regional radio show my organization produces and distributes for free. It's a great show, and I was happy to see those numbers rise. I wrote my first-ever blog post (I know, I'm a bit behind on blogging), which wasn't much, but got some traffic. As far as my bigger project (a curriculum on using digital media as tools for social change), the victories are less tangible, especially since I'm the only author on this, but I've moved past initial research and outlining and actually started writing.

I'm also going to be working to make this curriculum more relevant to the Seattle CTC community by sending out a survey and doing on-site interviews. I felt that kind of relevance and feedback was seriously lacking from this project, and my supervisor took my suggestions seriously, so we'll have the survey out by the end of the week. While I had been talking to other Seattle media and nonprofit folks about what the curriculum could look like, and doing research into media literacy and digital inclusion programs nationwide, we hadn't been asking the people who we would be asking to pilot the curriculum!

It felt so good to put what I've accomplished into writing that I think I'll spare you the details of what hasn't worked. Now that I'm clearer on what my organization actually wants out of me, everything should work smoother.

I just realized that October is almost half gone, which is just craziness! Well, what has happened since I last checked in? I'm still working on most of the same projects, like the Wiki and the "portal project," I think I brought that up last time. If anyone's in the South and knows of any museums or festivals that are related to food, please let me know and I'll make sure I include them!! I'm still helping schedule programs and they've been successful for the most part, I believe. The new website platform is not up yet, because the web-master really works on a volunteer schedule and hasn't had a chance to get everything together yet. I did send him a content layout plan though, so hopefully we'll be able to get that moving pretty shortly.
We had a reception here for the National Food Writer's Conference, and many of the great chefs of New Orleans were here with some very delicious food. Emeril himself stopped by for a bit-- I like to think we exchanged smiles, but I'm not entirely sure! That was a really fun event that I enjoyed participating in. We're going to have another similar reception/ event next week, to kick-off the Big Read Nola project and to hold an opening reception for our first ever Food and Literature Symposium. It should be quite interesting!
I have picked up a few new projects, including building an easy to read mailing list, which is currently a jumbled folder of lists and copies of checks and hand scribbled notes. I've also been helping to organize the Kid's Culinary Camps which happen a few weekends a month, getting the children's registration forms in order and keeping a file on them. I've also taken it upon myself to spend a little bit of time everyday finding an interesting article to post on Facebook relating to food and our community. I'm learning quite a lot and people seem to get into reading them, judging by the comments and thumbs ups! I'm expanding our scope to look at other Southern papers, too! I realized that I have to keep track of all these things that I'm doing, to help me create the manual to leave behind.
It's still a great time, and I'm enjoying the nature of my work here. I can't wait to start scheduling people for events to happen next year!

Comment from Mira Allen on October 14, 2009 - 4:25pm

I am SO jealous that you met Emeril. Sounds like you're having fun:)

Since my last report, a bunch of projects have progressed and a bunch more have begun. The wiki has been moving along. Almost all of the content is up, it's been reskinned, and I've added a translator and some access restriction extensions so we can store some somewhat "classified" information to it. Mediawiki has been a breeze to use after overcoming some permissions issues during the install; for a website that is primarily for disseminating information, I like it a lot more than Joomla/Drupal/modular type things. It isn't flashy and requires some setup, but it will be great to let residents create accounts and add info to the database.

Onto the new things. Drew up a proposal for deployment of a very small wifi deployment at an affordable housing project, and will be deploying that before the years' end. Wrote a request for proposals for wifi at a set of newly rehabbed housing developments for which we recently received a grant. Found a really good resource for writing RFPs. It'll be nice to both deploy a network firsthand and oversee deployment of a network by a contractor.

Am kind of excited about the wifi network I'll be installing. It relies on Broadband over Powerlines (BPL), which sends wireless signals through existing powerlines and has been proposed as a way to bring internet connectivity to areas where it otherwise would be unfeasible or expensive to build out completely new infrastructure (rural areas, underdeveloped countries). While BPL is yet to be totally proven/adopted for long-distance internet service (and interferes with HAM radios uh oh), it's widely available for household networks. The plan is to just have one internet connection and then use BPL adapters to bounce the connection up to each floor of this apartment building, then build out an open mesh network around these BPL gateways. The cost will be super low, less than a grand to bring free internet to the building, and the speed is gonna be acceptable, probably around 7Mbps down. I'm concerned about hardware security, though. There is lots of vandalism and theft in the building... still looking into addressing that.

Cheers, have a happy Autumn.

Comment from Mira Allen on October 7, 2009 - 4:28pm

Sounds like a great project! Keep us posted.

Comment from Mark Woodward on October 12, 2009 - 12:32pm

I'm very interested in the internet over power lines technology...any updates?

Greetings from El Paso, Texas! Another month at Latinitas and it feels like I have been here forever! I enjoy my job and the best part is to meet new faces who are interested in helping out Latinitas. I have been working on recruiting new volunteers interested in helping their community through Latinitas. It’s hard to find people who want to give up some time for a good cause. I have also been making new activities for our after school clubs. I have to come up with at least 4 a month for a total of 48 fresh new activities. The goal is for me to compile about 300 activities and make some new ones. It looks easy but it’s hard. I have also been working in a parent packet which includes a letter telling the parents who we are and what we do (a lot of parents don’t know where their daughters go afterschool, so we thought this would help us with donations) and also a registration form. Every form and application that I create I have to translate to Spanish, which isn’t easy, Spanish is my first language but having to translate and keep the same meaning it has in English, is hard. Also, I have been training new Club Leaders, so the training and keeping updates with them has been challenging, but fun.

Fortunately, we have had a good turn out in searching for volunteers within local community colleges and university. They have sent their students to volunteer with us and we have connected them with the clubs as mentors. Some of the challenges though have been recruiting girls. We have a PR intern that works in promoting our clubs, she has done so much but attendance is still low. We have a low budget and can’t have ice cream socials to bring in girls this semester so I don’t know how to bring them in without incentives. I am worried about girl attendance in the clubs and not having enough girls and just having a lot of volunteers that don’t have girls to mentors. I am also worried about coming up with fresh new activities and not make them repetitive. I have asked volunteers to help me in sharing their creativity so I want to see how that goes. Also, I have heard some volunteers get discouraged by not seeing girls so sometimes I worry I am not doing a good job keeping volunteers interested.

On a personal note, there was hail in El Paso about 2 weeks ago, golf size. I also got a kidney infection around the same time. I am better now but now the hail totally dented my car and cracked my windshield. I didn’t know that hail would come to El Paso (it’s a desert where it never rains) so I don’t have full coverage. I am now driving s total loss Chrysler Sebring but who knows what waits for me next.

attached: Letter to Parents in both English and Spanish

Comment from Mira Allen on October 8, 2009 - 11:43am

Hi Claudia! Sorry to hear about your kidney and windshield. I hope your luck is looking up.

In my first month at Prometheus, I did a lot of reading. I familiarized myself with some of the issues under discussion at the FCC, such as rural commercial radio, digital radio, Tribal radio, and diversity reporting. Part of my job is translating these complex regulatory issues into terms that ordinary people can understand, so I first need to build my own expertise on radio regulation. It's an ongoing process.

Apart from reading, one of the best ways I've learned about the organization has been by volunteering to edit various documents that others are producing. By editing grant applications, newsletter articles, and press releases, I quickly learned about Prometheus’ current activities and priorities. I also joined a group tasked with rewriting our mission, vision, and values statements, which has helped me to understand the big-picture aims of the organization.

These tasks have been helpful in defining my own role at Prometheus, based on the needs of the organization and my own skill set. In the coming months, I plan to build a strategy to make Prometheus’ vast knowledge of media regulation more “user-friendly” and more widely distributed (mostly through blog entries and other articles). I also hope to reorganize our internal files on regulatory policy and to help with a more accessible regulatory policy section on the website.

Comment from Mira Allen on October 8, 2009 - 12:26pm

Nice work on finding your niche.

Project:

Media Arts Center San Diego is opening a new facility (dba Digital Story Station) in North Park which will bring media arts to the neighborhood through a unique media gift store, a cool media lounge where media artists can hang-out, and media workshops for new media artists.

Happenings:

August was mainly devoted to researching and making a presentation to the Board of Directors regarding the legal structure for the new entity. Upon arriving here on my first day, I had suggested that the new entity be a project of the current nonprofit corporation. However, there was much discussion about creating a separate for-profit corporation or LLC. I met with attorneys and business organization experts to acquire the necessary information to make a presentation on legal structures to the Board and a recommendation to the Board that the new entity should remain a project of the current nonprofit corporation. The Board of Directors adopted my recommendation. After the Board meeting, the Executive Director said that my presentation was brilliant. My previous legal background helped make the presentation a success.

Challenges:

It was a challenge to conduct the extensive research necessary and to meet with a variety of experts to support my initial suggestion that the new entity remain a project of the current nonprofit corporation.

Resources:

Document presented to the Board of Directors on August 13, 2009 is attached.

Concerns:

Funding sources for this project have not been secured or even identified. In September, I now have to turn my attention to identifying viable funding sources and writing applications for those funds. I am starting with the Foundation Directory Online (FDO) database.

Comment from Mira Allen on September 11, 2009 - 3:00pm

Sounds like you're off to a running start. I would also check out the Grantmaker's Database for funding sources.