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Richard T. Anderson's picture
Richard T. Anderson
Grand Rapids Cable Access Center Inc.
,
December 13, 2006 - 5:44pm
1 comment

AT&T is after me.

Categories:

Well, we are really facing some nasty stuff in Michigan.

Here's the scoop. Yesterday the MI senate passed HB6456 (S-2). It is a bill that AT&T wants passed. They say it will create competition for your cable dollars and that prices will go down.

Many of you know this stuff, but here it goes.

Here's the big deal. Franchise Fees.

It was determined long ago by the government that 'We the People' own the airwaves. That's why you bought a radio or TV and that was it. You hooked it up to an antena and you recieved programming free of charge. The programming was paid for by advertisers.

When cable came along and wanted to charge for programming, the government acting on behalf of the citizens (which is a democratic government's job by the way, to do the will of the people). The government said okay, you can charge but you have to create a way for The People of the community to use the airwaves. A channel that anyone (not just rich white media corperation owners) could play their own programming and give voice to their thoughts and concerns.

Thus was Public Access born. Here's how it works. 5% of a cable company's profits go to the city that the cable company's services are being sold in. Of that 5% the city uses 2% to fund a Cable Public Access station. In Grand Rapids that is GRTV.

AT&T doesn't want to pay these Franchise Fees (amoung other things). So they designed this bill to do away with them and they are taking the bill from state to state and promising jobs and competition.

This bill destroys the funding for GRTV and introduces new fees to GRTV. Under the new law GRTV will have to pay the cable company for the line that connects it to Comcast. And also pay to be connected to AT&T's new set up.

"The final vote was 26-12 - Eight Democrats and four Republicans voted against the bill. ... Wow, sounds like this was a bi-partisan screwing. No surprise there."

The only hope now is that Granholm will veto it. But she is swayed by the hope of new jobs in MI. So, it is likely she will sign it into law.

So, if you are in MI, write to her. Call her. Tell her to not give into AT&T. They can come in and create jobs without The People losing public access to the airwaves that they own.

Capitol Web Address:
http://www.michigan.gov/gov

Capitol Web Mail Address:
http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-21995-57932--,00.html

Capitol Address:
Post Office Box 30013
Lansing, MI 48909
Phone: 517-335-7858

I don't like big corperations having all the say in the media. And frankly if there is no GRTV, then there is no Community Media Center, and while my job won't be affected right now, the possiblity of me continuing on after September 2007 will be next to nil.

I think we need to get citezenspeak going here. Has anyone used it? Let me know how it works and how it worked. That presentation at the PSO was great.

Thank-you,
Richard T. Anderson

 

Comment from danielle martin on December 19, 2006 - 12:52pm

danielle martin's picture

Hey Richard,

I've been following the Michigan legislation and yes, it makes me a bit depressed. I know there's a few public access stations that wanted to get VISTAs and now they're afraid they won't have the funding to support them.

Good luck...

-Danielle

Jessica Rothschuh's picture
Jessica Rothschuh
The Children's Partnership/Tides Center
,
December 13, 2006 - 2:36pm
No comments

maps, databases, holidays

Wow, it has been a while since I've blogged.  Things at The Children's Partnership and CCTPG are in a period of transition with staff joining and leaving, priorities changing and policy aims being refocused.  It's been hectic, but we're accomplishing a lot and creating several deliverables to fulfill funding requirements.

The good news is that the CTC map I described in my last post is finally posted.  As I'd described, the map was created as a resource to help schools locate organizations interested in being a potential partner with the schools to create after-school programs with Prop 49 funding.  Visit the map.

If your organization is located in California and is interested in being listed, just e-mail me.

I've also been helping to write and do research for a second broadband issue brief, helping to refocus the technology program for the next year, working on the bugs in CiviCRM and trying to do holiday shopping.

Tim Wescott's picture
Tim Wescott
Aspiration
,
December 12, 2006 - 7:04pm
2 comments

On-line Collaboration Software

Categories:

At the CTC Conference Call last Friday, I was asked to do a brief presentation on web-conferencing tools. Naturally, a presentation about web-conferencing tools deserves a presentation given on a web-conferencing tools, especially since the call consists of people literally all over the US. Therefore, I set up an account on Vyew, and gave my presentation there. You can still view the presentation (and its mishaps) if you go to Room 313064.

I chose Vyew primarily because it's free and doesn't require any downloads (other than a Flash plug-in for your browser). We also didn't require VOIP or any other fancy features. It worked relatively well, for our purposes. The call was part presentation, part experimentation. Everyone was able to see the presentation, and seemed to have a good time exploring the features, especially the whiteboard. This was somewhat problematic, in that I allowed everyone the ability to modify the presentation, which can be a bit distracting when the slide you're talking about disappears. At one point, I had to reload my powerpoint slide, so if you visit room on Vyew, you will see a very disjointed set of slides. When I was done, the other VISTAs on the call had a good time with the whiteboard feature.

I also attached is my original powerpoint slides, as well as my Excel file which contains a comparison of several web-conferencing tools, including a side-by-side comparison of their features and price.<

AttachmentSize
Web Conferencing Tools.ppt30.5 KB
Conferencing Tools.xls34 KB

Comment from danielle martin on December 12, 2006 - 9:22pm

danielle martin's picture

Hi Tim,

Can you post the files here on your blog?

I wish I had this a week ago. My presentation last Tuesday using WebEx failed completely, because I did a Windows Update and they didn't support the Windows Media Player 11 I needed to show my videos. Then when I tied to uninstall it and restart the session, it totally lost the whole event. Not fun. Did you find any tips in your research on best practices/techniques for presenting using this software vs. doing it in person?

Thanks,
Danielle

Comment from Tim Wescott on December 13, 2006 - 2:29pm

Tim Wescott's picture

Hmmm. I know I uploaded them. I'll try again.

EDIT: Looks like I succeeded this time.

danielle martin's picture
danielle martin
CTC VISTA Project / College of Public and Community Service at UMass Boston
Boston, MA
December 12, 2006 - 5:57pm
No comments

MA Area Holiday Shingdig/Potluck

Categories:

Bring music unless you want to listen to my parent's holiday record collection...The MA area CTC VISTA shindig/get-together/potluck is this Friday at 7pm on at Erin's house in Arlington (see email for directions).  The CTC VISTA taxi (aka my '89 Oldsmobile) can pick folks up at closest T stations (Davis on Red or Sullivan on Orange) if you let me know.

We're aiming to do a potluck so post a comment here what you will bring! 

[For all those VISTAs not geographically close, please feel free to add a comment to what you would bring if you could ;) ]

Will Quinones's picture
Will Quinones
Reel Stories Teen Filmmaking
,
December 12, 2006 - 2:38pm
2 comments

My movie is on AOL!!!!!!!!!!

AOL is hosting Reel Works films. My movie was the first to go up on their website. its pretty cool. you could also check out other Reel Works classics, ranging from sex to being muslim in america.

 i havnt blogged in a while so i thought this would be a great opportunity to do so. working at reelworks is great. right now i'm in charge of recruiting students and mentors. i've been going to alot of schools to talk about reelworks. yesterday i went to the Rush teen holiday party hosted by sway from mtv and russel simmons. rev run from run dmc performed. tommorow we are taking the kids to time warner to pitch their movie ideas to hbo and timewarner execs. i've been working closely with the kid whos building our website. i'm in charge of compression and uploading the movies to the surver. its been good. next week we are going to the tribeca party where we will meet a whole bunch of people from the festival. its been a busy month. you could find my movie and other reelworks movies at http://movies.aol.com/truestories/reelworks

Comment from danielle martin on December 12, 2006 - 5:36pm

danielle martin's picture

Hey Will,

Did you make this film back when you were a ReelWorks student?

Also, can you make the Digital Media call on Friday, since we're talking about video distribution and I know some folks had some questions about compression...

-Danielle

Comment from Will Quinones on December 12, 2006 - 5:53pm

Will Quinones's picture

yea i made it back in spring 2005. 

danielle martin's picture
danielle martin
CTC VISTA Project / College of Public and Community Service at UMass Boston
Boston, MA
December 12, 2006 - 11:01am
1 comment

Video Distribution - Digital Media Group call 12/15

Categories:

Just a note that we have our fourth CTC VISTA Digital Media group call on Friday December 12th at 2pm EST.  (Email Danielle for the call in #s.)

In an effort to make the calls more useful, we're going to focus on a topic and keep the individual updates to the first 15 minutes.  So any other CTC VISTAs that are interested in participating in a Video Distribution discussion, please call in!

Agenda

  • QUICK Introductions for new VISTA, Daniel Chen (2pm)
  • QUICK Project news (Updates to CTCVISTA.org, the Digest, etc) (2:10pm)

Discussion: Digital Video Distribution (2:15pm)

  • Video Blogging (Gariet?)
  • Other techniques?
  • Youth Video Sharing - Concerns for youth safety?
  • YouTube vs. Google Video vs. Blip.tv
  • Youth Video Exchange Network (2:30pm)- http://www.nymapexchange.net
    • (possible guest, Andrew from MNN)
    • Digital Bicycle / Torrents

Future discussion ideas?

(smaller groups?) (2:50pm)

IDEAS:

  • Youth Development
  • Volunteer Recruitment/Management
  • MySpace as an organizing tool?
  • Media Literacy

Comment from danielle martin on December 15, 2006 - 4:04pm

danielle martin's picture

As a little experiment, I'm going to post the notes as a comment here (12/15/06):

Attendees: Danielle, Jess, Gariet, Ray, Lashanda and guest: Andrew from MNN

Video Distribution Discussion

1. Compression

  • Gariet uses Final Cut Pro: H264 for Web Downloading (MPeg4), 300 kb per sec or 524, 10 MB for a 3 minute clip,
  • Andrew recommends MPEG Stream Clip - free compression software
  • CDS clips are working with clients who are older and they don't have time to cover distribution in their workshop

2. Andrew - guest speaker from MNN Youth Channel

  • they do media literacy trainings but also do programming for the channels in blocks (check out YouthChannel.org)
  • they are not only trying to encourage other centers to share youth produced content and show youth there is an outlet for all the stuff they are making
  • National Youth Media Access Project (NYMAP)
  • - New site is trying to create a place with people with access to youth produced media that is broadcast quality video to share media for air on public access centers; also includes profiles and resources for technical help and making video with youth.
  • for CTC VISTAs not working at public access centers, they could really tap into local resources at their local PEG access station as a way to distribute and motivate youth

More links to video resources at http://del.icio.us/CTCVISTA/video.

Next call topic - Youth Development....why teach youth how to make media? (January 19th? during next PSO)

William Martin's picture
William Martin
Tri-City Community Action Program, Inc.
,
December 12, 2006 - 10:20am
No comments

Outlook

   For those who have been wondering what I do with my time when I'm not working with Citizen schools or on the Gateway program this is what I'm dealing with.

From the malden Observer Dated 12/7/2006

Net Loss
By Amanda J. Mantone
Thursday, December 07, 2006 - Updated: 10:18 AM EST

The keys to job-hunting success: a stellar resume, a sharp interviewing suit at the ready, and a fast Internet connection for surfing online job postings and zapping applications across the World Wide Web.
Unless, of course, you don’t own a computer.

For low-income residents, recent immigrants or tech-illiterate job seekers, lacking access to the Internet – or lacking computer know-how altogether – can mean the difference between finding lasting employment and landing on the dole or in poverty forever.

Until recently, Malden’s Cyber Café was one-stop shopping for basic computer skills courses, free Internet access and links to job placement. They serve more than 80 members each day, and work closely with job placement agencies in the area.

But now, with their funding dwindling, the five-year-old resource center may be forced to close.

“We’ve gotten several grants over the years, but our partners’ ability to contribute is waning,” said Loretta Kemp, deputy directory of Tri-CAP, the anti-poverty agency that helped found the Cyber Café in 2000. “We do provide a service for the city, but we get no compensation from them. We’ve been kind of treading water.”

The lease for the nine-computer Cyber Café, which sits at the corner of Main and Pleasant streets downtown, is up in January. Anne D’Urso-Rose, assistant director of Cyber Café’s founding partner MATV, said finding funds to renew the lease is the café’s primary survival goal this winter.

“To pay the rent is really the funding need right now,” she said. “We need a temporary and a long-term solution. We need to extend our $17,000-a-year rent. There’s still a lot of people in this community who don’t have access to computers.”

According to George Moriarty, executive director of the Career Place, free Internet and computer cafes often succumb to a loss of funding after the initial burst of donations and volunteerism.

“It’s not unusual that we’re in this dire situation,” said Moriarty, who pointed to other cyber cafes in Massachusetts that have failed in recent years because of similar funding gaps. “You do quite well the first five years, but you really need to make that transition. Things start coming due, and leases expire. We fulfilled our mission, but we’re in the position where we need to transition to a more stable funding base.”

The Cyber Café has already begun charging $5 for their computer training courses, and implemented a 10-cent-per-page printing fee to offset their deficit. But café volunteers said they don’t want to tap their patrons’ wallets to stay afloat, because the population they serve often can’t spare the costs – and many might stop coming because of it.

Claire Murray of Murray Learning Associates, another Cyber Café partner, said the café is looking for new grants, private donations and matching corporate gifts as future funding sources. Until then, she and others are appealing to the residents of Malden to save their free Internet resource.

“People can give directly to this organization to support it. People at this time of year are into giving, and it would be a tax-deductible donation,” she said. “We are looking to see if we can find some matching donors. And we need some volunteers to take on some responsibility.”

Kemp said the café is looking for volunteers, particularly those willing to cultivate and work with teen volunteers, to give several regular hours a week toward staffing the center and doing data entry.

To more information on volunteering, taking a computer course or helping to support the Cyber Café, visit the center’s Web site at www.maldensquare.org, or call 781-393-0574.

To give a tax-deductible donation to the Cyber Café, make a personal check payable to Tri-CAP with “Cyber Café” in the memo line. Checks can be dropped off or mailed to Tri-CAP’s Malden office at 110 Pleasant St. To contact Tri-CAP, call 781-322-4125.

William Martin's picture
William Martin
Tri-City Community Action Program, Inc.
,
December 12, 2006 - 10:20am
No comments

One more try

   Thanks to some help from Danielle who so graciously took the time to change the booklet to a PDF file. I'm going to try to attach it so you can see what the outcome was.

Feel free to contact me with any ideas.

AttachmentSize
Gateway_to_sucsess[1].pdf1.85 MB
Raymond Varona's picture
Raymond Varona
Computers4Kids
,
December 11, 2006 - 3:51pm
No comments

Big Honkin' Update

One of my favorite Mitch Hedberg jokes goes something like this:

People who smoke cigarettes, they say, "You don't know how hard it is to quit smoking." Yes I do. It's as hard as it is to start flossing....

Except now substitute 'flossing' for 'blogging' and you'll get a general idea of why this blog has seen less activity than my savings account. Pretty sad on both counts.

Life here at C4K is mostly the same. There's been a few events and changes of note that I'll dive into though. First off, our learning lab director and my officemate just finished his last day last week. Its a real shame since not only was he good at his job, but he was also fun to share a 'cube with. Unfortunately, his father fell ill and he had to relocate to help take care of the family, so its doubly sad loss given the circumstances. His replacement seems equally capable and equally fun to be with though, so I'm sure everything here will be fine.

Our refurb lab is going through some fairly large changes at the moment. For starters, I spent almost a week organizing our junk, culling outdated/malfunctioning equipment, and generally cleaning and sorting the lab. Of course, its starting to lapse into a mess again, but luckily its confined to the workbench so hopefully it won't spread to our inventory shelves. The other notable change is that we're finally moving to Windows 2000 from 98, courtesy of TechSoup's MAR program. Its already throwing us a curve since our old method of blasting a master image to the refurb systems doesn't work for 2000, thanks to differing HALs and SIDs. Blech. We have a volunteer working on a RIS server and also looking into the Enterprise version of Ghost, so hopefully we'll be able to image instead of slogging through the installs manually.

Attendance is still down overall, although our numbers for trainings and recruiting are starting to pick up. Mostly middle school and/or ESL students though, so workshop topics will remain basic (greeting cards, using spreadsheets, etc) for awhile. I'm not entirely thrilled to be doing easy workshops, but its better than trying to steer a room full of novices (who all need individual attention and have never seemed to learn the word 'please') through more advanced stuff. For my own sanity I try and conduct something 'cool' and at least moderately challenging each month though. This month, I'm currently thinking of doing a dubbing workshop where they provide the dialogue for some movie clips and then we have a screening of sorts. Then, when my idealism finally wears off I'll probably switch to conducting a class on making CD labels.

Hopefully I don't sound terribly cynical, as I still enjoy the job very much. Given the absurdity of our kids though, I think a little cynicism is warranted. Anyway, keep up the good work everyone!

 

 

 

Ben Sheldon's picture
Ben Sheldon
CTC VISTA Project / College of Public and Community Service at UMass Boston
Boston, MA
December 7, 2006 - 11:39pm
No comments

What you missed out on

Categories:

The CTC VISTA Project organizes its own Pre-Service Orientation (PSO), which sets it apart from the majority of AmeriCorps*VISTA programs. Most VISTAs outside the Project are oriented through a regional PSO which is run directly by the Corporation for National and Community Service; the format and dialogue of these PSOs are quite different from the CTC VISTA Project's.

While digging through my files I ran across the packet from the regional PSO I attended when I first signed up with VISTA two years ago; my first year with VISTA was outside the CTC VISTA Project. I thought I'd write a post about the experience.

In my packet I have:

  • Diversity Bingo: As part of the registration process for the PSO, we were asked to submit a short biography about ourselves. This was turned into a bingo card with spaces labeled: "Drove across America", "Jewish", "Assisted in an adult literacy program", "Left-handed". We were asked to go around the room and find people with these traits and have them initial them.
  • Multicultural Competence Continuum: This chart explains that "developing multicultural competence helps you communicated and interact effectively and positively with diverse individuals and groups, in a diverse society". On the far left of the chart we have "Cultural Destructiveness: Making people fit the same cultural pattern and excluding those who don't fit -- forced assimilation. Emphasis on using differences as barriers". Followed by, from left to right, "Cultural Blindness", "Cultural Awareness", "Cultural Sensitivity", and "Multicultural Competence: Having the capacity to communicate and interact effectively with culturally diverse people, integrating elements of their culture - vocabulary, values, attitudes, rules and norms. Translation of knowledge into action."

There were about 150 VISTAs from all over the Atlantic seaboard at my PSO, which was held outside of Philadelphia in Wilmington, Delaware. We were arbitrarily split into smaller groups of about 30 to work with individual facilitators. During these facilitation sessions, we discussed where we grew up and how we defined community; this was contrasted against our facilitator's own upbringing. A lot of the discussion focused on defining poverty and "what it means to be poor". I recall that there was moderate amount of picture drawing.

The facilitation sessions culminated in the presentation of a skit that was to be created by our smaller group and presented to the rest of the VISTAs at the PSO. We parodied a hip-hop song--which one I can't recall--but something with a hook similar to "step up" and service-based lyrics to encourage citizens to serve their community.

The speaker at our PSO was the mayor of Wilmington, James Baker. He spoke just prior to our being sworn in as VISTAs. To paraphrase, he congratulated us on our commitment to service, but because of our racial and socio-economic backgrounds, our effectiveness would be diminished. There was a bit of an uproar over this; while I believe that Mayor Baker was originally set to swear us in, a Corporation officer did instead.

Ben Sheldon's picture
Ben Sheldon
CTC VISTA Project / College of Public and Community Service at UMass Boston
Boston, MA
December 7, 2006 - 11:00pm
No comments

Better blog comment announcements

Categories:

I've been a little disappointed with Drupal's Subscription module I installed a few months back. It was clunky and not very intuitive.

So, this afternoon I whipped up a small module that should send you an email every time someone comments on your blog. Actually, I whipped it up twice since a wayward asterisk ended up nuking the first version along with the entire modules directory of the website; thank goodness for backups.

Hopefully this will help the discussion along on the website since you'll know when someone replies to your blog. Of course, for parity's sake we should send another email to the first commenter if you comment on that comment, but that's a slippery slope for another day.

danielle martin's picture
danielle martin
CTC VISTA Project / College of Public and Community Service at UMass Boston
Boston, MA
December 6, 2006 - 5:06pm
1 comment

MySpace as an Organizing/Awareness Tool?

Categories:

MySpace logoBecause this came up in our last Digital Media call and Nettrice's last Digest article, I thought it might be interesting to folks that Tech Soup has a new article "How to Use MySpace to Raise Awareness" (by Eileen Cruz Coleman) about using MySpace as a low-cost p.r. tool.  It has a few general ideas about starting a social network online that I'm going to reference in my work in the next couple months, especially around the idea of active seeding and connecting other forms of communication.

Here's an exerpt:

"MySpace (or any other social network for that matter) isn't for everyone. You need to look at your organization and decide if you have the time, resources, and interest – among other things – to really make it work...You need to be constantly active, promote yourself, and keep the dialogue conversational..

Tips for Running a MySpace Campaign

  1. If you decide to launch a MySpace page for your organization, here are seven things you can do to increase your chances of success:
  2. On your MySpace page, ask friends to take specific actions such as "link to our Web site," "subscribe to our e-newsletter," "tell a friend about our current campaign," "contact us to learn about," and so on.
  3. Write blog entries and circulate your entries via your "bulletin board." Invite friends to post comments to your blog; visit your friends' pages and leave relevant and valuable comments; host events; and continue to add friends.
  4. Add videos to your MySpace pages. Images and videos have a way of motivating people to take action.
  5. Update your MySpace page frequently and customize it to resemble your organization's look and feel. Be careful not to make your page appear too stuffy.
  6. Don't make the mistake of staying within your own circle of like-minded organizations. When you add friends, consider reaching out to folks outside of your circle. In particular, nonprofits could reach out (via MySpace) to for-profit companies with strong social responsibility programs that can help spread the word about their causes.
  7. Add your MySpace URL to your email signature line, business card, and letterhead in order to encourage people to visit your MySpace page.
  8. Write articles about how your organization is using MySpace to advance its causes and submit them to both online and print publications. Or publish them on your Web site and ask bloggers to link to them."

Comment from gariet cowin on December 7, 2006 - 2:16pm

gariet cowin's picture

Thanks for blogging about myspace!

Some of the folks here at PCM have been bugging me to set up a myspace page for the OLLIE program (which I did, sort of), but I don't think that they quite understand what myspace is. They've just heard that it is something that young people use, and has something to do with social networking.

Their idea, I think, was to befriend Portland youth, who would then get interested in participating in the OLLIE program. Unfortunately, befriending youth via myspace is not easily done, as there are restrictions put in place to stop adults from adding under-aged kids to their friends list.

Befriending other organizations makes more sense to me. Although I'm still not totally clear on what the overall purpose is. People here at PCM seem very interested in "brand awareness", and "getting the OLLIE name out there", or whatever. But nobody has told me why that is important. So I guess that's my real question:

If we are already working with more schools than we can handle, and we are sufficiently funded, why do we care if Joe Citizen has heard of the OLLIE program or not?

William Martin's picture
William Martin
Tri-City Community Action Program, Inc.
,
December 6, 2006 - 1:29pm
No comments

Sorry

Apparently it wont load here so I'm going to try some thing else I will keep you posted.

William Martin's picture
William Martin
Tri-City Community Action Program, Inc.
,
December 6, 2006 - 1:18pm
No comments

Lets try this again

Well the project with Citizen schools is finished and may I say WOW was that interesting.

The project was set to help those with no computer skills at all to get to a specific web site that would help them with

  • Resumes
  • Cover letters
  • Job searching
  • Interviewing tips

The class that was conducted at the Cyber Cafe on Thursday 11-30-2006 an was taught by the students of the Citizen schools.

Im going to try to post the booklet here so you can see it.

                       

lauren bratslavsky's picture
lauren bratslavsky
Media Bridges, Cincinnati, Inc
,
December 6, 2006 - 1:13pm
1 comment

My conference expereince and some classic blogging

Categories:

well well. I went to a conference about 3 weeks ago now and haven't blogggged about it yet. So here it is with some other content thrown in.

I went up to East Lansing, MI (seems like an odd sorta town) for a conference. It was the Alliance for Community Media - Central States Region. It's basically a chance for all of the partcipating public, education, and government access stations from Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky to get together and hang out. The highlight of the weekend was the Philo T. Farnsworth Video Awards, awarded to the best public access programming the region. (some fun trivia, Philo is the inventor of television. the professor on Futurama is named after him and also the wierd tech guy in UHF.... if any one has even seen that).

The event was supposed to be semi-formal ( we protested and wore those shirts with the painted on tux) and it took place on a boat on the river that runs through Lansing. So the event was on this grand Princess Boat with a nice set up inside and a disco ball and fake palm trees and little sailor caps . The joke was that this awards ceremony will be long and boring and have cheesy dancing so if we're on a moving boat, no one can get off. ha. well, joke on them. the boat never moved, so bunch of people left after the raffle. The captain said the waters were to perilous. Funny, he said this after he informed us that the boat is 30 feet high and the deepest part of the river is 10 feet and we have nothing to worry about. Well well, rough waters? Uh uh. A local gent said that he's been on this boat at least 20 times. It has only moved twice. Apparently the fuel costs way too much so the captain says rough waters and ends up busing the tables. Ahh. good times.

There were some great workshops on community media, making media, and fundraising and sessions about public policy (if you didn't know, the FCC and congress (aka special interests peddling their fancy money) are planning on eliminating mandatory funding for public//education/government access television, or something like that. in any case, it's not good for the average public access station). I found out how fricking amazing Grand Rapids Community Media Center and their executive director are. Absolutely incredible how far their outreach goes and their place in the community (good job Rich).

The evenings were spent at a local roadhouse where college kids dared not enter since the might of the public access alliance of drinkers took up a better part of the bar. Geez was there drinking. And cigars. Me and my fellow VISTA (there are two of us at Media Bridges, me and a vista from the Ohio Community Computing Network) met up with a former ctc vista, Daniell K who is not attending trade shows to sell fancy media servers. He told us of all his adventures and woes and ups and downs working at Grand Rapids and then Lowell Community Television. He's the one that helped start Digital Bicycle. He's very inspiring and comes with load of advice. If you're ever feeling bogged down by the vista post at your organization, I suggest you email him for some advice or at least a pep talk on coping.

Speaking of which --- I talked to him about jumping back into digital distributing of media in some way or another. I guess the original site is not really in use anymore. I'm pretty sure I have the resources here to ask for more bandwith and set up a server. I know a little bit about setting up torrents and all that. If you have gotten to this point of the post---- anyone interested in turning your digital projects, storytelling, PSAs, docs, etc etc into torrents and sharing? I have found some great videos from Media Bridges that I can share around. I was thinking about setting up a blog with links to the torrents. We can all download and upload as needed. And share! Nothing fancy, just some digital distribution.......

Anyways. I've been putting together dvds of youth-produced content from here and placed other videos like from the Media that Matters Film fest and things I've downloaded with permission from archive.org. Once I get the little flash animation intros and transitions together, it will be ready for airtime.

Other than that, not much else going on. Kinda slow around here this time of the year. Things will kick up in January and the youth media initiative program super delux raz a mataz tastic channel digital space and so on will be up and running. this is my new years resolution. or something like that.

 

Comment from Richard T. Anderson on December 7, 2006 - 12:09pm

Richard T. Anderson's picture

"I found out how fricking amazing Grand Rapids Community Media Center and their executive director are. Absolutely incredible how far their outreach goes and their place in the community (good job Rich)."

Um, thanks for the kudos. I've worked hard to make this place freaking amazing! :D

Seriously, if I ran this place it would not have the out reach it has. I'm much too shy. lol.

I really will send you some DVD's. Soon! I just have to get to the darn post office. Someone slap me.

Peace,

Rich

(I want to be able to single space).

brittney fosbrook's picture
brittney fosbrook
Homeless Prenatal Program
,
December 4, 2006 - 7:20pm
3 comments

master troubleshooter should be my VISTA title

Categories:

i'm not sure if i have talked with anyone about this, but two weeks ago (i cannot believe how much time has gone by already) i went to an drupal extreme makeover.  basically, i was feed for two days and taught the ins and outs of drupal. well, i was taught as much as you can learn in a crash course.  i was also able to  work one-on-one with a drupal expert to start the revision of our extremely outdated helping-sf. it was an amazing experience (& free for our organization too!)  in the past two weeks, however, i have had about zero time to work on the website.  this drives me crazy.  currently, i am teaching class, helping in the technology center, doing general tech support for the office (meaning about 20 phone calls a day) and being a lead interviewer for my new boss (what?!?).  i feel as though there is no time to actually work on the projects that i feel i was hired for.  my job title would be more accurately stated as "master troubleshooter".   

oohh. i hear the phone-- another access database questions i am sure. 

Comment from gariet cowin on December 5, 2006 - 2:57pm

gariet cowin's picture

Was this drupal training something that was done at your site, or did you go to a drupal conference of some kind? We're just starting to talk about doing a huge site overhaul over here, using drupal, and I'm still not totally clear on the drupal concept. Is it just a CMS? Can you add it to an existing site, keeping your presentation, but using drupal for content management? Or do you have to redesign everything within drupal?

I want to go to a drupal extreme makeover!

Comment from Aliya Abbasi on December 5, 2006 - 4:17pm

Aliya Abbasi's picture

Kudos... so your job changed (maybe temporarily) and you are handling it. Good for You!

Now you get to pick your boss - Yeah!!

This is your chance to convert - give up programming and join the TANs!!!
or
if troubleshooting gets too tiresome and you want to get back to websites and drupal programming redirect help-desk to a technology organization - maybe Tim and Aspiration can step-in or help you look for a good tech assistance provider.

Comment from brittney fosbrook on December 5, 2006 - 6:28pm

brittney fosbrook's picture

i knew that you would be jealous of my extreme makeover! i suppose that i could give you a bit of information about the training:

i was invited from a random connection i made at the sf wifi project conference sponsored by nten. my drupal training was conducted at aspiration tech (where tim works). there were four of us non-profiters and about 5 drupal people (druppies?).

i would definitely not consider myself a drupal expert, but i do know that calling drupal *just* a content management system is an understatement! i feel like there are numerous modules that can be downloaded to fulfill a variety of different needs. the problem is knowing which modules to download, and that is where the drupal people came in. i am under the impression that you do not add drupal cms stuff as an extension of a website, but rather create an entire website in drupal. but i am not sure about this. i do know, however, that we did a complete drupal switch for helping-sf, but we drupalized much of theme and format of our old site to keep the design the same.

i hope this helps!

danielle martin's picture
danielle martin
CTC VISTA Project / College of Public and Community Service at UMass Boston
Boston, MA
December 4, 2006 - 3:15pm
No comments

Live D Web Conference - Neighborhood Networks 12/05

Categories:

Are you ready? I'm leading my first web conference presentation tomorrow afternoon to spread my digital storytelling love on the Neighborhood Networks Quarterly Consortia Conference Call. I met some of these folks back in June at the Digital Storytelling Bootcamp at the (HUD) Neighborhood Networks Regional Technical Assistance Workshops. Check out the Powerpoint if you like.

NN Logo

I'm excited to try this new form of presenting and see if we can get more NN members excited about doing digital storytelling at their centers. We're using WebEx so I'll let y'all know how it goes and if my efficacious humor conveys over web presentation software and teleconference call.

Plans are still in the works for more Spreading the Stories train-the-trainer workshops next year, hopefully out in western MA and something local in Boston, perhaps with Latino groups or youth.

My big project over the past couple weeks is managing the StoriesForChange.net website development and looking for not only the right approach but also the best technology (and/or CMS) with a group of great volunteers and facilitators. I've got a bunch of thoughts now about approaches to building social networking and/or file sharing sites with nonprofits, but I'll blog about that later.

Oh did I mention we're pulling together a MassIMPACT strategic planning and board meeting for next week? MassIMPACT's board hasn't met in quite a while and the board members I've met with individually all have interesting ideas about where the organization should go in the future.

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William Martin's picture
William Martin
Tri-City Community Action Program, Inc.
,
December 4, 2006 - 10:54am
No comments

WHEW

 This was originally entered  August 18 2006

Well all I can say is WOW. Im looking at my computer and thinking "I actualy have two minutes to do something other then work" so here I am to catch you up on whats been happening.

First: The monthly meeting at U-Mass
It was a wonderful day at sea. The waves were rough and the the weather was hot and sticky. But we all had a great time and we had a chance to discus our progress.

THEN DA DA DA WASHINGTON
The CTC Conference was fantastic, if anyone is reading these I highly recommend you go to the CTCnet web site and look at the sessions and download the resources, the information I got was extreamly helpful.

Last but not least: Tech Foundations
If your in Boston or the surounding area, The Tech Foundation meets on the third Tuesday of every month at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. They discus a wide range of intrests Incudeing what to do with your knowledge after VISTA. I recomend you give it a try, for directions feel free to contact me at the CyberCafe@Malden square

willmart64@yahoo.com or willmart@maldensquare.org

Ross Musselman's picture
Ross Musselman
Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network
,
November 29, 2006 - 4:27pm
No comments

Worst VISTA Ever

Categories:

Well, it's been several months, which is wrong in so many ways that I cannot even begin to count them. I've probably been labeled the "Worst VISTA Ever" by the Corporation, but since I don't have very ambivalent feelings about them, I don't really care. The fact is that I have been busy over the last 4+ months and if that means that I don't have time to blog for CTC, well, then that is what it means.

August was spent getting a new VISTA (Matthew Isaacs is officially the schnizzel!) and applying for $1.5m in NSF money. Unfortunately, a week before the deadline, the RFP was postponed because money had not come through from the STPHTR Congress. (If you are wondering, that would be "Screw the Poor, Help the Rich".) Putting this in my blog probably makes me an even stronger candidate for WVE. Bring it on, 'cause I'm adding to my résumé.

To be perfectly honest, I don't really know what happened to September. I know that there was a good amount of work. I know that I gave a presentation to the U of I Business Department about CUWiN, and that I presented CUWiN's work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to a Summit on Katrina. Actually, I should pause here to note a little something funny about the Summit. I was on a panel about social entrepreneurship in the contact of natural disaster relief. I didn't previously understand social entrepreneurship completely, but I do now. I also know now that half the panel ate up most of the panel's time talking about traditional entrepreneurship, so we couldn't get into questions about whether making money in a disaster is ethical. It was a convenient strategy for them, but was really annoying.

October was really about travel. I attended the Air Jaldi WSFII Conference in Dharamsala, India, and visited our partners in South Africa, who have put up a CUWiN network in Mamelodi Township. If you are interested in reading about the India portion of this trip, you can check out my actual blog (which is only slightly more used), at http://nsneedle.blogspot.com.

I returned to the US on 11 November and stepped right back into the grant writing frenzy. We had the grants from August due on November 15, and, well, let's just say that while I was away it didn't get done. Afterwards, I took a week off for Thanksgiving, which entailed the arrival of my best friend and a trip to Kansas, where Mom and Dad live, and Sister (and fiancé) was visiting. It was a good time, but it was by no means the rest and relaxation I was hoping for.

That brings me to this week. I'm preparing to take part in a meeting in San Diego in December, as well as trying to wrap up the hundreds of loose ends that predominate our work at the moment. Oh, and did I mention that I have been leading the organization's efforts to create internal structures? That's been a hoot and a half, especially trying to balance various people's hot buttons. But, so far so good, and I am actually the Secretary of the CUWiN Foundation. I'm also trying to develop a new part of the organization that would actually be responsible for doing network installations. It's a good way to bring in some cash, but it needs a lot of work before I can push it out.

So, that's it from here. I should note that this blog system is really unwieldy. I spent five minutes trying to recover from an attempt to add é. First it added &amp to the text, then it would not let me back into the editor, and when I finally made it into the editor, it only showed me the first four lines of this blog, although I had already written about twenty. I'm not angry. Nope. I'm just telling whoever is in charge that this happened and it would be nice if it didn't. Then again, with my WVE status in the bank, I probably shouldn't be taken seriously.

gariet cowin's picture
gariet cowin
Portland Community Media
,
November 29, 2006 - 4:09pm
1 comment

i am having a philosophical dilemma

Categories:

Yeah, I'm back. Danielle just reverse psychologized me into posting a new blog. She's good.

Anyway, everything is going fine here, technically. I mean, I'm surviving. I'm eating pretty well. I have a good number of friends here in Portland. And PCM just hired some new part-time staff, all of whom are exceptionally cute. I even have a really great boss. What is there to complain about?

Well...I guess I'm just not sure what I'm doing. Or why I'm doing it. I became a CTC VISTA, because I wanted to feel like I was doing something good for the country. Giving something back. And I'm not going to join the military, so this seemed like the way to go. So here I am, using my skizzills to help young people learn how to use video equipment. Which is fun and all...but I can't really see that I am doing any good whatsoever.

Aren't there already more than enough wannabe directors and producers and movie stars already? Don't kids already get more than enough media in their lives, without me pushing even more on them? Why am I building an OLLIE website (and myspace page) when kids already spend too much time online as it is? I honestly feel like all I am doing is helping to provide kids with another cool way to get out of doing actual work. So what is the benefit?

There are some (non-CTC) VISTAs just down the street at the African American Health Coalition, and I can't be sure (because for some reason they don't have any interest in talking to me), but it feels to me like they are doing a good service for the community. I mean "Health"! And "African American"! And "Coalition"! And what am I doing? I'm helping kids watch tv.

I'm not trying to badmouth the program. I guess I just need reassurance that I'm actually helping somehow. Because really, if I'm not somehow benefiting the community, then why am I doing this?

Comment from Jessica McCoy on December 3, 2006 - 2:07pm

Jessica McCoy's picture

Hey Gariet,

So your post prodded me into doing a little responding/bloggity blogging myself. It just hit a nerve for me.

I mean, I can sympathize with you feeling like it's hard to see how what you are doing is making a difference. But I would also argue that teaching kids media production can be valuable. Key words: can be. I think it all depends on what they are doing with their skills.

You're right that the world doesn't really need more kids sitting around watching TV or spending hours on MySpace. It's also probably true that we don't need more wannabe directors and movie stars....unless those kids have a vision for how to use the skills they are learning.

For me, the power in teaching media skills to young people is not that they learn how to operate a camera and use video editing software, but that they learn alternate ways of expressing themselves, understanding the world around them, and communicating with others. Maybe there's a way to gently shift the focus of what your kids are doing so that their work has more of a socially concious edge. I'm not sure what kind of stuff they are shooting now, but why not talk about something they see in their neighborhood/school/wherever that they want to change. They can research the problem, interview people, write about how they feel, and show the finished product to people who have the power to make a change. Who knows where it might go?

One of the things I like best about where I work is that our emphasis isn't on teaching technology skills. It's about storytelling. Our goal is to teach people how to tell a compelling story: how to write a script in a personal voice that actually speaks to their desired audience, how to use visuals not just as a literal representation of their spoken words but also as a metaphor that can add a second layer of meaning, how to bring sound and special effects into their story in a way that contributes to the message. The technology just serves as a vehicle for self-expression.

A great thing about our approach is that it gives people the chance to sort of step outside their experience and view it in a different way. And of course there's potential for bringing people together once the stories start to flow. Also, the approach of helping people tell real stories from their own lives fights against the tide of "reality" TV and the other meaningless drivel that mainstream media focuses on too often. It helps people see that their stories/lives have value and gives an outlet for the voice everyone has somewhere inside.

This may seem like a lot to take on with kids, but I think it's possible. (but that's also what makes it so important!) I think it's vital that young people today learn how to communicate using multimedia tools, since media/computer literacy is now just as important as reading and writing.

So don't feel all down about not making a difference. I think it can be done. I just try to remember that it's not the media tools themselves that are revolutionary: it's what people can do with them.

--Jess