townie ramblings

Next week is the big 2010 Alliance for Community Media conference and people from access centers all over the country will be converging on Pittsburgh to network with one another and discuss community media, PEG TV and all the possibilities the future affords. Attendees will be able to choose from six different tracks this year including:

- Citizen Journalism & Social Media
- Community Media Center Management, HR & Board Development
- Fundraising & Collaborations
- Engineering, Broadband, Network management & Related Issues
- Media & Telecom Policy
- Community Engagement, Training & Marketing/Outreach

Our good friend Colin Rhinesmith from CCTV in Cambridge Massachusetts has been charged with leading the Citizen Journalism and Social Media track and I was lucky enough to have been asked to present on the “Using Social Media to Serve the PEG Community and NonProfit Organizations” panel on July 9th. I will be joining Colin, Lee Webster the iYouth Director at channelAustin and Jason Daniels the Executive Director at ECAT in North Easton, MA to discuss the way our centers utilize social networking to inform our communities and strengthen our alliances with NonProfit Organizations.

We were each asked to develop a short presentation on how our own social media strategies have proven to be successful. I have chosen to focus on how VCAM has used social networking in an attempt to build an online identity that is faithful to the values and spirit in our mission. The following are some of the bullet points that I have started putting together for the panel discussion:

Social networking is sharing culture:
- Social media, unlike the “dreaded” newsletter, we don’t have to think of everything to share with our audience.
- We frequently share news items (blog posts, tweets, photos, video – any content shared via social networking) from sources that aren’t directly related to our organization but are related to the spirit and values of our mission. Net neutrality, rural broadband, copyright and creative commons, media access, fair use, free speech etc.
- It is all part of illustrating a larger context.
- The power of the retweet or “share” functions: sharing information = speed skating relay (i.e. teamwork, partnerships)
- By sharing information that others in our social media network have created, we are helping push information further and to more people than the originator of the content could do alone.
- Not only are we indicating to our own network of followers that we value the information we are retweeting, we’re also telling the creator of the content that we appreciate what they have to offer and are willing to help their cause.
- Why do nonprofits come to VCAM? A fundamental principle of ours: We’re here to help others get important information out to their community. Social media is an extension of that commitment.

Strategy around content created by our staff:
- We try to distribute all of our own news throughout our network, link to blog posts and newsletter (constant contact) via Twitter and Facebook, Tweet “round-ups” on the blog etc.
- Redundancy is OK in fact has proven quite useful for us.
- If we shoot a short PSA we’re going to put it on our channel, upload it to blip.tv & YouTube > embed the video in our blog > link to the blog post via Twitter > and share a link to the blogpost on our FB wall.
- Cast a wide net.

Direct benefits of developing our network:
- It has enabled us to offer more effective social media workshops to our nonprofit partners.
- More and more people are listing our social media network as how they heard about our organization and/or know about our workshops.
- Through discussions with many of our members we are noticing a growing familiarity with the larger context of community media (i.e. legislation and policy, challenges associated with evolving technology in relation to our funding structure, why advocacy is essential etc.) and many people have credited our Facebook page and Twitter feed for keeping up to date with important issues facing PEG.

Tips?:
- These are things that have worked for VCAM and every center is different
- That said, my only real tip for those folks just starting to develop their social media network and online identity: There are thousands of social media experts out there – feel free to ignore them all. (Just have fun with it)

Note: I hope to update this blog post as the list develops……

Here is a post of mine from February 13 on Front Porch Forum in response to a suggestion that Google’s recently announced broadband project is the answer to Burlington’s ongoing telecom woes:

Looking ahead I’m hoping that we will continue to recognize the tremendous value in our local fiber infrastructure. As many of you have probably read, the Blue Ribbon Committee thoughtfully identified our local network as “first class” and “valuable to the city in many ways”. Some of these ways include “economic development”, “becoming green” and “future proofing” Burlington. I urge folks to consider the harm to the value of this asset that could be caused by inviting Google to build a nearly identical fiber network parallel to the one we already own.

That said, perhaps we could learn a good deal from Google’s model for service which includes “an ‘open access’ network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers.” Only in our case, it would be the City of Burlington that cultivates revenue generating competition on the fiber network we already own. One more suggestion to add to the list of many offered at the Burlington City Council meeting last Thursday night.

Blue Ribbon Committee report (PDF)

The Cosmonaut in 5 steps from Riot Cinema on Vimeo.

Full disclosure: I am a strong supporter of restoring net neutrality principles to the Internet and preserving citizen access to modern communication networks in general. To many folks, there are hundreds of reasons why Net Neutrality is an essential principle to uphold. It has become clear, particularly in the last decade, that an open Internet is an ideal framework to nurture innovation, preserve free speech and encourage civic engagement. I think the ACLU did a great job of summing it up when they described the Internet as a “vibrant marketplace of ideas” that “cannot function with corporate censors”.

So you can imagine my surprise when I received an email from Free Press’ savetheinternet.com telling me that my U.S. representative, Congressman Peter Welch, was on the fence regarding his stance on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (HR 3458). How could this be? It made no sense to me how a Democrat from Vermont could even consider putting big business’ interests ahead of the citizen’s of our state to this degree. So last Monday, when I saw an open invitation via tweet from @vprnet (Vermont Public Radio) to submit questions for Congressman Welch to be asked in the upcoming episode of Vermont Edition, I saw it as a great opportunity. I figured 9 out of 10 questions submitted were going to be related to health care, so why not take the opportunity to change it up a bit and sneak in a question about the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009.

Here was the exact question I emailed to the folks at VPR’s Vermont Edition:

Your spokesperson Paul Heintz is quoted by Seven Days newspaper as saying “Congressman Welch strongly supports net neutrality and believes the Internet should remain open and available to all consumers. At the same time, he wants to ensure the expansion of broadband access to rural areas throughout Vermont,” Could you please expand on why you see these two priorities as being interrelated,  and why, according to Free Press’ savetheinternet.com,  you are currently “undecided” on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (HR 3458)?

Please listen to Rep. Welch’s response here:
RepWelchNetNeutrality

My interpretation: What Congressman Welch is referring to when he says we need to find ways to “increase the investment” that is “going to allow for the build out of the infrastructure” is that we need to find ways to keep the big telcos happy so they will be inclined to complete the build out of our broadband network to rural areas in the state. The simple truth is large telecommunications corporations oppose Network Neutrality because it limits their ability to play the role of gatekeeper of the network. What some folks might not already know is the battle for Net Neutrality at its core is not about hardware or the actual physical network. It’s about content, and who controls it. More specifically, what Internet users are enabled to produce and consume and for what cost. There are many people who speculate that big telcos are working to impose a tiered pay structure for Internet usage that resembles today’s cable television model.

On this note, it has been suggested that Congressman Welch has received a notable amount of contributions from telecommunications-related PAC’s in the past two years (close to $30,000). That said, I’d like to give Rep. Welch the benefit of the doubt and believe that he remains undecided on net neutrality legislation because he is trying to find a way to marry together the investment for the build out of the network while maintaining the openness of the Internet to all ideas and comers. In all honesty, I admire Rep. Welch’s commitment to public access to the network and bringing rural broadband to the state. This is imperative if we want to whittle away at the digital divide and ensure that we maintain the resources necessary to enable an informed and engaged citizenry.

That said, I think we need to make a stronger effort to ensure that the resources we hope to deliver to all corners of our state remain intact and as rich in accessible and affordable information as ever. I am also fearful that the Congressman’s passive stance on net neutrality puts at risk the most important mechanism for public discourse of the modern era. I’d also like to remind him that both ValleyNet and Burlington Telecom are Vermont owned fiber companies that could undoubtedly benefit from a portion of the stimulus money set aside by federal agencies for building broadband networks. Taking this into consideration might ease his sense of dependency on the big telcos who nearly always fail to put the best interest of the people first.

Politics aside, the citizens of Burlington are on the verge of losing a tremendous resource, capable of offering unrivaled local connectivity, news and information sources of unlimited diversity, and vast opportunity for cultivating civic engagement. Let’s just say if I had the option to trade, I would much rather it be an indoor ice climbing wall that was melting slowly before our eyes. Instead, it is our municipally owned, state-of-the-art, fiber-to-the-home, telecommunications network. A network saturated with potential for both local media consumers and local content creators alike.

At some point very soon (yesterday even) folks in BTV are going to need to ask themselves if they will ever be comfortable treating Burlington Telecom like an adult. This means working to move beyond recent mistakes and allowing the company to get back to business. If not, we need to find the best possible “out” sooner rather than later. If we choose to go this route, I’d like to suggest we at least give a neighborly jingle to the folks at ValleyNet and see if there is any opportunity to reintroduce some of the original BT players. The folks with the vision and know how to match. That said, if we choose to stop dragging our feet in an effort to maintain a one-of-a-kind resource that we are all heavily invested in, we must find a way to let BT operate at a pace advantageous to a healthy business. A business capable of being competitive in a modern telecommunications arena. In essence, we’re going to need to find it in ourselves ASAP, to free BT to a certain degree from the methodical (and often painfully slow) clock ticking on the wall at city council meetings.

Brief note: I’m rarely one to support adding additional layers of process to achieve goals that are reachable if existing players could better coordinate and buckle down a bit. That said, I feel last night’s vote in favor of the formation of the Blue Ribbon Committee is an excellent opportunity to insulate important decision making from surrounding politics and streamline the effort to get BT back into compliance with its CPG.

One thing is for certain (again, politics aside) dragging our feet isn’t going to help in any way whatsoever. In this case, time is money. Both yours and mine. The good news is we’re all invested in something capable of bearing great fruit, if we can work together to enable it to mature.