Digital Arts Service Corps - conference call

Digital Media Group Updates Jan/Feb

danielle martin — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:56:15 +0000

I created a little smorgasboard of my notes from one-on-one calls, the PSO in January, the MA area meeting last week, and the Digital Media group call a couple weeks ago to produce the long awaited Digital Media Group Updates! Wooohoo! [I've taken the liberty to bold the most interesting tidbits.]

AJ McGuire (HOME Inc.) - working with school as part of Research Action Change Class, on issues of global warming and educational inequality, and created videos; working on implementing the MOSAIC media literacy curriculum and incorporating video production
Colleen Kelly (Project: Think Different)- youth action summit on MLK Jr. day with media watch team; managing interns; implementing a media literacy program at Edwards Middle School two days a week
Dan Chen (Pui Tak Center) - tasked to develop digital media program for youth, incorporating his photography and graphic design skills; helping the org by developing template for the annual report and updating the website; writing grants for new cameras and looking for volunteers/mentors
Derek Maxwell (Phillips Community Television) - *new* - doing well so far, although PCTV is not really a cable access station...
Elisha Durrant (The Inland Northwest Community Access Network) - *new* - youth media and community outreach for TINCAN;
Jessica McCoy (Center for Digital Storytelling) - getting into nitty gritty of collecting content and doing phone interviews for the StoreForChange.net portal for community digital storytellers; also working on Youth Uprising project to develop curriculum for collecting digital content for Oakland Tribune; updating CDS cookbook with more on post-production of digital stories and managing some interns to take over some of the post-production tasks on CDS workshops
Julie Bohnlein (Boston Community Access and Programming Foundation, Inc.) - *new* - working at Roxbury studios primarily of BNN to create youth show/channel; has a nice cubicle and a phone; floating between Roxbuy and downtown studios; needs foodstamp letter; connect with Lauren and Richard
Kevin Palmer (HOME Inc.) - just received grant to create a community radio station at a school and writing more grants for other media labs at other local high schools; partnering with Julie at BNN to create Boston youth media program/show
Lauren Bratslavsky (Media Bridges, Cincinnati, Inc) - attended Media Reform conference in Memphis; started Saturday youth media lab… intro curriculum to use Photobooth and working on handouts tutorials for iMovie; developing Youth Media Block (new name on the channel); working with charter school's wed elective day to do PSA workshop and planning a summer program; has an intern from the university
Leena Silverman (YMCA of Greater Boston) - *new* - establishing more technology programs at Eggleston Sq YMCA through Cyber Y lab; setting up new policies/procedures and summer youth program; implementing Kinetic City
Mike Matthews (The Media Aid Center) - *new* - working with Ramon on developing tv programs and focusing on distribution
Naomi Jimenez (Marcus A. Foster Educational Institute/OTXWest) - *new* - working with new multimedia center and updating digital storytelling curriculum for summer institute; working on Sat to attend/ghost classes at OTX; connected with ol CTC VISTA (now staff) Jeff Benton
Ramon Myers (The Media Aid Center) - *new* - started out as a volunteer but now is a VISTA working to develop TV programs and marketing in TV studio embedded in a high school; working on outreach into the community
Richard Anderson (Grand Rapids Community Media Center) - working on some video projects; working a little on the audio stuff but the financial status of the station/center; hosted January open house to do community outreach; doing some interview with Catalyst Radio program;
Shaneka Smith (Westside Youth Technical Entrepreneur Center) - continuing work on entreprenuerial projects with youth like t-shirt buisness and commercials; doing more music mixing, album covers, & music videos; also working on awareness videos with Girls program on the topic of abusive relationships
Tony O'Rourke (Boys & Girls Clubs of the East Valley, AZ) - sat down with supervisor and successfully talked about expectations; started doing outreach with the community with kids to come to Club, targeted Young Champions (young athletes); reorganized the computer lab over the holidays and writing grants to get new equipment
Will Quinones (Reel Works Teen Filmmaking) - went to Sundance Festival and presented as part of the Adobe Youth Vision, paired with filmmaker and did a daily video blog; doing outreach for ReelWorks through MySpace and ListenUP!
Sharon Smack (Seventh Day Baptist Community Development Education and Service Outreach Ministry) - switched from Community Organizing group in January; created commercials for the youth service projects and will also be doing some radio broadcasting.

[Yes, I'm missing a few folks...don't worry...I'm on the case!]

Also on the call, we discussed Leena's plight to explain VISTA to the YMCA staff and heard many suggestions from folks on how they explain it to others (check out Leena's handy one pager on her blog).

Next call, March 2nd 2pm EST...BYO Curriculum (more details next week!).

TA for Nonprofits conference call

Rebecca White — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:32:22 +0000

I just moved from the Community Organizing group to the Technical Assistance (TA) for Nonprofits group because I'm doing web and TA work rather than anything related to fundraising or outreach. I was one of the two note-takers on this month's conference call; my notes are after the jump.

Notes on the TA for Nonprofits (group) conference call

February 2, 2006

Kevin (in Miami) talked about the January PSO—"The PSO was a lot of fun." It was long, but nice to see people's faces and what they're doing. There were presentations on community wireless, copyright laws, and creating podcasts (others have blogged about the presentations).
Karl (in San Francisco) is at NTEN, and has been involved in setting up their conference coming up in April (that we have been hashing out the logistics of getting to/staying at). He had been to a regular VISTA PSO when he started his term of service in October. The major benefit to the CTC VISTA Project PSO was meeting people who are working in the similar fields to his.
Ross is at a community wireless network organization; they build their own open source wireless network meshing software, but most of his recent work has been "creating an organization out of the organization"—forming a board, getting oversite and coordinating participants' actions. He also works with communities, both in the US and internationally, to put up wireless networks. Potential connection: John's organization in Lowell, MA is wanting to put together a wireless network for downtown Lowell.
Matt from somewhere talked, but there was wicked static on the conference line and especially over everything he said.

Aliya asked us what the most fun thing we've been doing since the last conference call was, or about a major success we've had since then:

John: setting up a testing/virtual server, with a whole bunch of DNS/web/directory servers. He is becoming a McGuyver addict (putting his physics degree to "work")
Kamala: hasn't been having fun with her home computer. She has been working with PHP and MySQL. Potential connection: me! I have been doing some work with PHP and MySQL as well.
Cheryl (in North Carolina): has been working with Plone, but more importantly she successfully planted basil and oregano. Also, there is a mouse in her office. (this kind of mousetrap might work...)
Tim (in San Francisco) has been working on getting a new version of Social Source Commons out. He hasn't been involved in planning it, but his organization is having a "coding conference" (?) in Oakland at the end of February, that will talk about assisting (or maybe actually assist?) people who want to use technology in advocacy work.
Laura and Corey (in San Diego?) have been taking a Dreamweaver class, and are starting a Photoshop class next week. They're developing an online system to track how kids are doing in Advanced Placement (AP) courses. They did a demo the other week which worked out "pretty well..." School loans are fixed (congrats!)
Andrea has been trying for a month or two to get volunteers to teach computer courses. She'll be taking a Dreamweaver class starting next (this) week. She's been taking advantage of the yoga classes that her organization offers the community (hey! my organization should start holding yoga classes!)
Then I talked; since I'm new to the TA for Nonprofits group, I introduced myself: My term of service started in September. I'm from Maine, but serving in Sacramento, CA at the California Coalition for Rural Housing (CCRH). I've been wrapping up work on a new website (watch that space!). In the past two weeks I've started making phone calls and talking to people who've attended community mapping trainings that the organization (specifically, my supervisor Darryl) holds as part of our CRATE program. I'll be putting together a "rural housing toolbox" from their feedback, and from plans laid out in some grants—it will be a bunch of online resources (both on our website and links to other sites) relevant to affordable housing in rural Californian communities. I've also been working on a database of Inclusionary Housing policies (basically: community requirements that a portion of any new housing be "affordable") from California communities, which will be on our website; I've been writing a Drupal module to make it searchable.

Our next phone call will be Wednesday March 7 at 1:30 PM EST.

Updates from the TANs!

Laura Hanley — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:01:26 +0000

On Monday, January 8, 2007, the TANs took the time to gather for our monthly conference call.

Cheryl entertained us with an informative and interesting presentation on Disaster Recovery Planning. An issue applicable to anyone and everyone, she told us what a disaster recovery plan is, why to have one, and gave us a step-by-step guide to creating one!

Next it was time for Best of/Worst of for December/early January. Here’s what people had to say!

Best thing that happened:

Tim – He enjoyed his time off during the holidays. In addition, he took advantage of the opportunity to sit in on a board meeting for his organization, which he found interesting. Way to learn new things!

Kamala – Kamala also enjoyed her vacation and took time to spend time with her family. Work-related, she has been testing databases, which she enjoys.

Karl – Karl spent his vacation time in Seattle with his family, and we all know spending time with your family during the holidays is a plus. Work-wise, he’s been spending time cleaning up the database and making it user-friendly.

Andrea – She successfully completed her EMT classes! Congrats, Andrea!

Laura – Laura also enjoyed her vacation time, splitting her time between being with her family in Indiana and seeing friends in Kentucky.

Corey – Corey got new Taebo videos! Now she and Laura can spend their mornings getting fit…and waking up the people who live under them. :)

Cheryl – Cheryl has taken the initiative to join an organization and meet new people! She attended a pot-luck meal, which was quite enjoyable.

Worst thing that happened:

Tim – A lot was waiting for him when he returned to work from his vacation. Getting caught up on things is never fun, unless you like that sort of thing (which he does not).

Kamala – Her home computer crashed. :( ‘Nuff said.

Karl – He doesn’t think that getting caught up when returning from vacation is much fun either.

Andrea – Despite the fact that she just finished her EMT classes, she’s been battling being sick.

Laura – See her blogs Unnecessary (?) adventures and Unnecessary (?) adventures – Part II. Being sick and taking SevenCorners into account when trying to receive services is no picnic.

Corey – Her car got mysteriously scratched….and it’s leased, so she has to get it fixed so she’s not fined when her lease is up. That’s not easy on a VISTA budget.

Cheryl – One day she was carrying her backpack, and she noticed that her food-containing tupperware dish leaked all over everything. What a mess!

Our next call is scheduled for 2/2/2007 at 4:00pm EST/1:00 PST. Until then, be good, stay warm, and keep on keeping on!!

Random question of the month (added by Laura): How do you create your smileys? Do they face left? (: or do they face right? :) In addition, are you right- or left-handed? I wonder if there's a correlation between which direction you make your smileys and which hand you write with.

Digital Media Updates (Call 01/26 - Working with Youth)

danielle martin — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 20:20:53 +0000

This new year brings on a new phase of me being behind on getting y'all together, but here's to New Year's resolutions! I'll be starting the individual check-in calls tomorrow and hope we can schedule the next conference call for Friday, January 26th at 2pm EST. At the last call, we had a guest speaker, which seemed to work out well. There was talk of focusing our next call on youth development and tips for engaging youth in media projects. I'll try to get a guest speaker but let me know if there's anything specific you're willing to share with the group.

Also, will the lack of a CTCNet conference this year, we're a little more open to attending other conferences. Since your org is required to send you to one, it might be interesting if we find one related to digital media that we could aim for a critical mass of Digital Media CTC VISTAs. The NAMAC Conference would be perfect, but it's not until October 2007. The Alliance for Community Media conference might only be interesting for folks in cable access stations (July in MN). Many of the other CTC VISTAs will be going to the NTEN Conference in April, which may appeal to your techie side...Anyway, I'll start looking around, but suggestions are welcome!

Finally, as I spammed everyone in the general CTC VISTA list, our guest blogger this month will be Morgan Sully, former VISTA and digital media/storytelling guru, so keep an eye on the blogs and get ready to comment and ask him questions galore. Oh and it wouldn't hurt to blog some photos or videos of some stuff you're working on too (according to Dina's blog entry, apparently I need to start bribing everyone with homemade cookies...)

PS. Thanks to a lovely gift of time from Mr. Ben Sheldon, I've got a new personal blog and portfolio up at http://verdesmoke.com. It's mostly for grad school's to look at for now but soon I hope to be waxing philosophically about life there as well.

Meeting notes from 12/8/06. (My bad, TANs!)

Laura Hanley — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 05:22:12 +0000

Whoops...so I realized that I haven't posted the notes from our conference call on 12/8/06. Here it is 1/7/07 and our next conference call is tomorrow. My apologies for the delay in posting these. I promise to be more quick in posting tomorrow's notes (if you let me!), do a better job, and be more interesting.

Tim got us started out with a very informative, interesting, and later entertaining, presentation on using on-line collaboration software, specifically Vyew. He did a better job than I could ever do explaining it in his blog. If you haven’t checked it out already, you really should…it’s neat stuff!

Next up will be Cheryl, who will teach us about having a Disaster Recovery Plan. No matter what part of the country, or the world, you’re in it’s always important to have a plan, and we look forward to learning how to go about getting that done!

We briefly discussed using MySpace for the organizations we’re VISTAs for, but I don’t really remember where that discussion ended up going…any comments/input would be greatly appreciated!

Next, we did a best of/worst of for November and early December (personally or job-related). Sorry if any of the details got mixed up or something is listed as happening that didn’t happen that way…feel free to let me know or correct me in any comments! Here’s what people had to offer!

Best thing that happened:

Cheryl – She has been interviewing with nonprofits learning a lot about what different organizations do. Informational interviews are a great way to not only learn about what others do, but a networking opportunity as well!

Andrea – She got a new bike (and helmet)! Living in a place where she can ride year-round, I’m sure she’ll get great use out of it!

Kamilla – I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear anything you said! If I had thought about it before, I could have emailed you to get your responses, but alas I didn’t. L

Corey – Thanksgiving! It’s Thanksgiving – what is there NOT to love about it!

Laura – She took an HTML class! What’s big about it is that this is the first computer class that she has ever taken. Seeing how it seems that most of the other CTC VISTAs have backgrounds in computer or at least technical skills, Laura is on her way to expanding her general technical knowledge…something she honestly never thought she’d do!

John – During the Thanksgiving holiday, one of John’s favorite moments was seeing the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. He’s also glad to be keeping busy with work!

Jeff – Cisco recently donated phone equipment to his organization, which he has been having fun playing with!

Tim – His boss has been facilitating workshops on Open Data and Open Gov, and Tim has been assisting in the preparation for those workshops. I really hope that’s right…I didn’t really understand what you were talking about. L

Worst thing that happened:

Cheryl – She has also been remotely working on technical assessments for different groups. She is responsible for writing up the results of questions asked during the assessments, and wants to figure out an efficient way to do this. Something that could automatically generate results would be great!

Andrea – Along with the joy that the holidays bring comes stress…especially stressing about getting things done before the new year. Hang in there…it’s almost over! (Or here, rather, by this point.)

Kamilla – See above

Corey – She continues to face struggles in working out her loan situation. It really would be great if she could use her Ed Award when she finishes to help pay off loans!

Jeff – He almost ran over a kid with a U-haul trailer. If you ask me, that would be enough to ruin anyone’s day.

Laura – Although she was fortunate enough to go back to Indiana for Thanksgiving, she was unfortunate in the fact that she got sick in doing so. But I guess that’s what going from sunny, warm San Diego to grey, rainy, chilly Indianapolis will do to ya!

John – In order to get to DC for his best moment, a 10-hour drive from Boston was required. Not so fun.

Tim – One thing he has been working on is improving security for social source commons. The reason for this, however, he is less than thrilled about (understandably). Apparently someone got into and tampered with it. That’s never a good thing.

Our next call is scheduled for 1/8/2007 (yes, tomorrow/today, but I’m writing this as if I actually posted these on time). Sorry this turned out kind of long…I hope it was at least was up to par. Until then!

October Digital Media Group Call Notes

danielle martin — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:44:49 +0000

Ug. I don't have time to reformat the whole list of notes in Drupal (can't just copy and paste from Word) so here's an attachment with the conference call notes from the Digital Media group last Friday, 10/2.