My conference expereince and some classic blogging

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

"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).