I almost forgot!

Andrew Lynn, who is spearheading the NYMAP/YVXN thingamajig flew to Portland last week for a visit.

For those of you who aren't "in the know", NYMAP stand for the National Youth Media Access Project. I guess somebody didn't like the acronym though, because now I think it is being changed to YVXN, which stands for Youth Video eXchange Network. The idea is that cable access centers around the country will be able to digitally swap youth-produced videos. So far, it is still in the testing stages, with only a handful of access centers being involved, but the hopes are to eventually include many more.

Hi. Just an intro for the new vistas, I've been working on developing and starting a youth media program at the public access center in Cincinnati. It started off slow and bit discouraging but it's starting to gain speed and so on.

Last Wed, I started teaching a video production/media literacy class for a group of high school students from a charter school. This week would have been week number two, but Cincinnati had a snow emergency on Tues and Wed which also meant a snow day! (the city shut down early, if that's possible because of six inches of snow, people freak out with even the mention of snow around here....). Anyways, I'm basing this class off the Youth Channel's PSA/documentary curriculum, available on their website www.youthchannel.org . It's my first real teaching experience. And it's not so bad so far, though I did accidentally say shit, which they thought was a riot.

Comment from Rebecca White on February 9, 2007 - 7:06pm

Maybe you know about this, but there's a button to compress the pictures in a Word (or Powerpoint) document on the "picture" toolbar (it shows up when you click on a picture, or when you right-click a picture and tell it to show the toolbar). It looks like a box with arrows pointing in at the corners. Word tends to save as much info as possible about a picture, so this can really reduce the size; one of my recent documents with a single PNG went from 3MB to .5MB.

From the Youth Channel newsletter:

News from the NYMAP Video Exchange: Over the next few weeks, MNN Youth Channel and the other NYMAP (National Youth Media Access Partners) will be officially launching the new Youth Video Exchange website out to the world and bringing in new partners. The website www.nymapexchange.net is a networking hub for youth-serving community media centers and youth media sites, which aims to build the infrastructure to make better sharing of youth-produced media possible. The Core Partners in this project are: People TV in Atlanta, Grand Rapids Community Media Center, St. Paul Neighborhood Network, and Portland Community Media in Oregon. Check out the website www.nymapexchange.net , or email andrew@youthchannel.org to learn more or to find out how you could get involved.

We finally got our super-sweet computer that we will be using for the NYMAP youth video exchange.  Unfortunately, I got it about 5 minutes before I left for vacation, so it has just been sitting around for the last week.  But now I am back, and ready to put it to good use.  Youth media swapping, here I come!

I'll post another entry when I actually have a chance to try it out, and learn more about the whole exchange process. 

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!

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

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)

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).

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).