Wait, it's fall already?

Hey Dascorps folks! The time is zooming by, as several of you have mentioned. Things are good here, though very busy! A few things that are gong on:

-PCF just launched a new project today - http://videowtf.com/ - it's a collaborative Q&A site related to video production, so I'd love it if you all would stop by and ask/answer questions, and spread the word!

-Several Miro Community sites are now live! There are live sites at http://video.medfield.tv/ , http://mirocommunity.access-scat.org/, and Erica's QUQ site will be at their domain soon, but for now is at http://quq.mirocommunity.org/. I wrote a blog post about Miro Community for pegpoint @ http://pegpoint.org/2009/10/05/connecting-communities-through-online-video .

I've talked to several of you about the Miro Community project, but I thought this would be a good time/place to say that if you think your organization would be interested in moderating/cultivating a local online video community, I'd love to talk to you. PCF has a grant from the Knight Foundation to create these local video sites, and I personally think they can be pretty hard-core and awesome, so I would encourage folks to think about creating one with us if you do local media work!

We have a few other sites that are in the process of being created. So far, the biggest challenge is convincing partners (other than Erica, who got it right away!) of the importance of doing outreach around the site and trying to really make sure we're on the same page about creating a local video community, not just a cool way to display the station videos (though it is that, too). I'm reading up on a variety of community media projects to help me express this better and figure out how we fit in. Besides the local sites, I'm still working on my feminist video site, now housed at nist.tv but not yet public. It's been interesting to me in doing planning for that the different visions people have for community media online. Is it more important to have a curated collection/ an editor's voice, or to have an archive? How do we encourage people to make media that others actually want to watch - what does that look like? These are some of the things I'm thinking a lot about as I continue with that project.

I have finished a draft "Partner Guide" to Miro Community which I will attach once I polish it off a little more, by next month. It's nice to have something tangible like this, though I have found that with this project, the chicken and egg problem comes up again and again. So I've written a guide, but I don't yet have too many real world examples, but it's hard to get real world partners when I don't have a guide/materials to show them... etc. I have grand visions for what is possible but sometimes it feels like people need to see those visions in order to get to them, which is frustrating at times. But we're forging ahead and it's working out!

-I'm headed to Public Media Camp in DC next week. I'm excited about the opportunities there, I'll let you know how it goes.

-I'm still getting used to blog post writing style, which I'm not always the most comfortable with. But I think this is one of those areas where you learn by doing, so I'm trying to just keep going for it.

-I have a ton of PDFs and books that I feel like I should read to help with my project and my overall knowledge, but I haven't been able to get around to doing it. I'm traveling this week, so I'm hoping that will afford some time to dig in to some interesting and relevant material.

-Thanks for all the advice on my previous post. Still adjusting to desk work, etc., and trying to learn to steadily plow through activities and keep track of them along the way. Something I find really interesting about the organizational culture here is that things are very flexible, so our focus can quickly shift. I like this, but it definitely takes some getting used to, so I'm trying to learn to be more flexible while also trying to stay on top of things.

-This month I'm looking forward to seeing the first few sites develop and thrive, as well as setting up new ones. We're releasing our .8 version of the software soon, and now that several sites are up and running I'm really excited to see what will happen with them and how we can build real local video communities. With that comes some anxiety about the collaborative process - except for the feminist video site, I'm not in control of content or really of outreach, so while I can help our partners with those areas, it's at times a challenge to be removed from direct development. But, again, a good one, and a great learning opportunity about capacity building in general.

Comment from Mira Allen on October 14, 2009 - 4:32pm

I'm excited for you to be going to the thing in DC. I wanted to go, but I had scheduling conflicts. Def keep us posted on what you learn.

Comment from Anne Jonas on October 14, 2009 - 4:38pm

it should be interesting - you can also check out the #nprthink hashtag on twitter for related stuff: https://twitter.com/#search?q=%23NPRThink - from this event - http://digitalthinkin.ning.com/ .