Looks like I'll have to learn HTML for future posts...

A lot of what I do is research, which means reading many techie and media blogs, going on YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, and following any other leads I happen to catch. Half the time I’m not sure whether what I’m doing counts as work, since how many people can claim that going on Facebook or using Ning is part of their job function? Not surprisingly, I sometimes find myself in incredibly mind-numbing lulls because there’s only so much staring and reading you can do before your brain fries.
I’ve also started keeping a blog on Portland Community Media’s website that I update every Friday. The blog feature on the site is not often used and is extremely contained (no way to post to other sites like Digg or Facebook, can’t email and no RSS feeds). Only staff members use it. Because of this, I’m currently helping them revitalize their blog feature and their web presence.
I’m part of the Access 2.0 committee and the Media Education team. Access 2.0 is a three-year grant that allows PCM to update all its gear to support future New Media stuff and to transition from video to digital records. We're halfway through Year Two right now. Under Access 2.0, I’m scheduled to team-teach twice for the coming quarter on “social networking” (oooh... shiny).
This last weekend I went to Pickathon, an indie bluegrass music festival at Pendarvis Farm outside of Portland (next PCM blog entry). PCM was filming there, and I got my first taste of directing and filming. It’s incredible how much video has in common with photography, except that everything’s moving. And all the considerations you have to make because of movement and how that dictates the order of frames. It was especially fun working the camera, and I even learned how to work a jib cam.
So coming up I’m supposed to do interviews with the various teams at PCM about how they use Facil. We’re transitioning to a Drupal database and PCM wants to figure out the pros and cons to fashion their new database.
I also have some ideas in the works for new media (and New Media) programs at PCM that are more accessible to a greater demographic—in particular for low-income. PCM has not been the best at outreach; people come to them. I’m not sure whether PCM even has the staff capacity for outreach. It has waived class fees before for students who can’t afford them, but I still think there’s a lot of barriers despite this. Serial classes, tech savvy-ness, volunteering for production—all of this stuff is not necessarily doable if you really have to scrape for a living. Multiple jobs, being on call, even the amount of cultural exposure to technology are not necessarily conducive to video tech for expression. More to come, but right now I’m thinking cell phones and mobile tech.

Oh, and read my blog. :)
http://pcmtv.org/?q=blog/80