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……

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.

It’s no secret, Microsoft and News Corp are in early discussions about forming an exclusive alliance that would include the removal from Google’s search indexes of all online content provided by the growing number of News Corp publications. This would in effect make news items coming from 25 Australian outlets, half a dozen from the UK, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Dow Jones available exclusively on Microsoft’s Bing. If nothing else, the partnership is guaranteed to cause a stir if not a huge shakeup as far as the consumption of online news is concerned. What is also highly likely to stem from this, is an even more volatile relationship than the one we know now, between smaller news providers/independent content creators and Murdoch’s media empire.

One of the key issues at hand for content providers everywhere is not the global media giant and his relentless drive to charge fees to the readers and viewers of News Corp content. It is the ever-present threat he has chosen to hang over the heads of other online news providers. When asked whether or not his mission to charge for News Corp’s online content can be successful when other large international news sources, specifically the BBC, continue to offer online news for free, Murdoch is quoted as saying…

But we’re better…. And anyway, if you look at them, most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers now, and we’ll be suing them for copyright. They’ll have to spend a lot more money on a lot more reporters to cover the world when they can’t steal from newspapers.

First things first, does anyone actually see the BBC as a pack of thieves? or Murdoch as a victim of theft? After reading how easily he threatens to drag the online news industry into the court system, a few questions come to mind… How far down the line with their lawsuits will News Corp choose to go? Will they stop at large international corporations or come after smaller folks… folks that you and I know personally? What will happen to our beloved second hand news sources in the blogoshpere? Will Murdoch’s forcefulness evolve into a relationship with consumers of online news like the ones we are seeing between the RIAA and consumers of music? MPAA and consumers of home movies? YouTube and independent media makers?

Picture this: Waking up with a hot pot of Speeder’s coffee, sitting down to read the online news, opening up the admin panel on your blog to speak your piece, and seeing a take down notice in place of yesterday’s post…Faulty footnote perhaps?

This was a title graphic I created last May for the 2009 Alliance for Community Media Northeast conference held at Champlain College in Burlington Vermont. We tacked it on to the head of all the video segments shot at the conference and posted them online throughout the event. Visit  the ACMNE blip.tv channel to watch all the great breakout sessions on the most important issues and advances surrounding community media today.

The next time you run into someone who lives in a cave, take a minute to stop and ask them if they’re aware of the rapidly evolving technological landscape changing the way people communicate all over the world. Chances are, the cave dweller will feel insulted and ask you just what the hell you think drove them to take up residence in a cave in the first place. With very few exceptions, you can’t live in the western world today and not be affected in some way by the accessibility and relative affordability (relative affordability and the ever-present digital divide to be explored in later posts) of modern tools for communication. Whether it be your new laptop, Flip camera, mp3 recorder, or smartphone, you’re likely speaking your mind in ways unimaginable a decade ago.

What this means for your local community media center…
There is little doubt that the aforementioned rapidly evolving technological landscape has been extremely fruitful for community media centers everywhere. Yet, unfortunately it has also transformed itself into a proven battleground for many. The truth of it boils down to one issue, the structure in which most community media organizations are funded. From the dawn of public access television, community media centers or “Access Management Organizations”, or “AMO’s”, in large part have negotiated with their local cable providers for the portion of their budget set aside by capital funding. This money is in effect to be spent on equipment and facilities rather than day to day operations. To some folks closer to the big telcos, the realization that digital video production equipment has become cheaper and more accessible to the average consumer, has lead them to suggest that the level of capital funding awarded to AMO’s should reflect this and therefore reduced significantly. It is also not uncommon for folks close to the cable providers to assert that AMO’s are mismanaging their funds through expenditures on tools more closely related to web video rather than cablecast.

There are dozens of problems with these assertions and because this is merely a blog post I will try to focus in on just a couple of them.

First and foremost, to suggest that capital funding to community media centers should be reduced because the overall cost of production equipment is dropping, is to assume community media organizations collectively reached their maximum potential at some point fifteen or more years ago, when the relative cost of purchasing and maintaining equipment was considerably greater. This is to say that the highest standards in technical quality of content have already been reached, as well as the saturation point for community participation. This simply isn’t true.

Anyone who has spent time in their local community center recently will likely have noticed their studio is busier than ever because people are participating more than ever. In addition, their public access tv stations are showing new content of greater technical quality more and more frequently. Essentially, in the midst of the YouTube era, when many people can now afford to buy the necessary tools to produce and distribute digital video content on their own, community media centers are finding themselves more active and relevant than ever before. This is because they now do so much more, and have a greater positive impact on their communities with capital budgets relatively similar in size to those 15 years ago.

Truth be told, one could argue that the level of funding we’ve required cable operators to provide through franchise fees has been subpar all along and now we’re finally getting a glimpse of the real potential in community media.

It’s about time!